LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap.,!24:j^opyright No... 
Shelf.'.a?_4i5 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 



% ^togtap|)tcal (Outline 



/ 

HORACE E. SCUDDER 




CAMBRIDGE 



M DCCC XCVII 



OF C3,y; 



MAR 191897 j 



Q^-A^x^.tM 



Hs4-5 



Copyright, 1897, 
Bs HORACE £. SCUDDER 



PREFACE 

When the family of Mr. Houghton asked 
me to prepare a memorial of his life I gladly 
consented, for it was a grateful task to recall 
his vigorous personality. I did not fully per- 
ceive till I came to write my book how im- 
possible it would be to make anything like 
an adequate Life: there were very few let- 
ters which I could use, for almost the whole 
of Mr. Houghton's correspondence was of a 
business sort, and it was difficult to detach 
him from his business. I was bent on pre- 
senting him individually, yet some of his 
most notable achievements were accomplished 
through and with the hearty cooperation of 
his associates. I am sure they will not mis- 
understand the concentration of my attention 
on him. 

I was compelled, after I had sketched the 



vi PREFACE 

beginning of his life by means of such scanty 
documents as I could procure, to rely largely 
upon my own recollections and impressions. 
The portrait thus is drawn from my own 
point of view. It is no more than an out- 
line. If conditions had been more favorable, 
not only would I gladly have filled out the 
sketch with a more detailed treatment, but I 
would have tried to correct my own view by 
a comparison with that of one and another of 
Mr. Houghton's acquaintances and friends. 
In truth I fear I have strayed somewhat from 
the task set me of preparing a memorial vol- 
ume. I can only plead that after thirty years' 
constant intercourse with Mr. Houghton, his 
personahty was too vivid for me to treat it 
with the studied impartiality of a historian. 



NOTE ON THE PORTRAITS 

The frontispiece is from a photograph taken in 1893 
for use by Mr. Robert Gordon Hardie when painting 
the portrait presented by Mr. Houghton to his partners 
and associates, which hangs in the Counting Room of the 
Riverside Press. 

The picture facing page 12 represents Mr. Houghton 
just before entering college, and his sister Marilla, after- 
wards Mrs. Gallup, who was two years his junior. 

The portrait facing page 56 gives the aspect of Mr. 
Houghton at the time when he went into business with 
Mr. Bolles. 

The three-quarters portrait opposite page 74 is from 
a photograph taken about 1860. 

The figure which faces page 82 is from a photograph 
taken in Paris when Mr. Houghton was there in 1864. 

The portrait opposite page 110 is from a photograph 
taken in 1878. 

In the Aldennanic Chamber at the City Hall, Cam- 
bridge, hangs a painting by Mr. Hardie which was pre- 
sented to the city by various persons engaged in the 
business of the Press, and at the several offices of 
Houghton, Mifflin and Company. The photogravure 
facing page 132 is from this painting, and Mr. Hardie 
in executing the portrait had before him a photograph 
taken by Sarony about 1884. 

The latest portrait of Mr. Houghton is that facing 
page 152, and is from a photograph taken in 1895. 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 



Henry Oscar Houghton was born on the 
30th of April, 1823, in Sutton, a hill town of 
Caledonia County, in the northeastern corner 
of Vermont. His mother, who was forty-three 
years old at the time, was Marilla, daughter 
of Captain James Clay, of Putney, Vermont, 
an officer in the Revolutionary army. His 
father, six years his wife's senior, was Cap- 
tain William Houghton, a native of Bolton, 
Massachusetts. Bolton had been set off from 
Lancaster, and Lancaster had been the home 
of the Houghton family since John Hough- 
ton, of Lancaster, England, came to America 
in the Abigail in 1635. Captain William 
Houghton was somewhat of a rover, and took 
his growing family with him as he moved 
from one place to another up the Connecticut 
valley and into the Vermont hills, and even, 



2 HENRY OSCAK HOUGHTON 

when his children had hegun to establish 
themselves, into the southwest part of New 
York State. 

There were six sons and six daughters, and 
a period of nearly twenty-one years separated 
Henry Oscar, who was the youngest but one, 
from his sister Stella, who was the oldest in 
the family. Of the six sons, two became 
clergymen, one died in his early manhood, 
two were merchants, and the youngest was 
the printer and publisher. He had one sister 
younger than himself, MarUla Houghton, who 
became a teacher, married Dr. J. C. GaUup, 
and established the large girls' school in 
Clinton, New York, now known as Houghton 
Seminary. Mr. Houghton outHved all his 
brothers and sisters, but during their lifetime 
his relations with them were very close. He 
was, at one time, under the watch and ward 
of his brother Daniel, eight years his senior ; 
his brother Albert GaUatin became his busi- 
ness partner in 1866 ; he owed much to his 
oldest sister and her husband, David Scott, 
and the long period when he and his younger 
sister were the only ones left made the connee- 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 3 

tion between them one of special tenderness. 
The family scattered widely, five of the mem- 
bers going to Alabama ; but when the young- 
est son was born no one was yet married, and 
probably all were gathered in the home at 
Sutton. 

Sutton is high up on one of the long lines 
of roUing hills which run north and south. It 
looks off upon Burke Mountain in the south- 
east and the Willoughby Gap about six miles 
to the northeast. The Gap and Lake form 
strikingly picturesque points in the landscape, 
but otherwise the country is not marked by 
more noticeable features than the hills which 
one climbs only to find other hills lying be- 
yond. The country is a farming and graz- 
ing district, and has changed little since the 
Houghton family lived there. The plain 
house in which Mr. Houghton was born still 
stands in the village, and there are persons 
living who remember the little shock-headed 
boy, with hair hanging over his forehead, 
who made one of the figures in the household. 

Captain Houghton moved to Sutton in 
1820. It was one of the resting-places in his 



4 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

roving life. He was a tanner by trade, but 
bad failed in business in Lyndon, his previous 
home, and seems to have gained his livelihood 
in Sutton by working for the farmers there. 
The family was large and it was a hard strug- 
gle to keep the wolf from the door. That 
the worst did not befall them was due largely 
to the energy and thrift of the mother, whom 
her son often spoke of with admiration for 
her force of character. The Houghtons did 
not strike root very deeply in the thin soil 
of Sutton, and, after a few years, once more 
moved on to Bradford. In one of his ad- 
dresses before the Vermont Association, Mr. 
Houghton gave a sHght reminiscence of this 
time of his early youth. 

" When I was a very small boy, not over 
ten years old," he said, "my family emigrated 
from the northern part of Vermont, from the 
little town of Sutton, a famous maple-sugar 
town, to the town of Bradford, on the Con- 
necticut River; and my duty on that jour- 
ney, besides riding on the furniture wagon, 
was to help drive the cows which we had to 
take with us. One Saturday evening, just at 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 5 

dusk, we came to the little town of Ryegate, 
and the signs of thrift and industry, as shown 
by the green fields, attracted my father, so 
that he stopped at what was then a Scotch 
village. I remember that I was frightened 
nearly out of my wits by the landlady, who, 
while stirring her oatmeal porridge, com- 
plained volubly because we did not go on to 
the next tavern. So fearful and depressed 
was I that I could not taste of that wonderful 
dish, which, they say, is ' the food of horses 
in England, and of men in Scotland.' But 
when I was lighted up to bed by the land- 
lord's daughter, as she handed me the candle 
to go to my little chamber, she put her soft 
hand on my head, — and I have felt the sym- 
pathetic touch of that soft hand for over fifty 
years." The reminiscence was used in intro- 
ducing a reference to Mr. Whitelaw Reid, 
whose mother was a native of Ryegate, but it 
was indicative of a nature singularly suscepti- 
ble to little kindnesses. 

At Bradford there was a country academy, 
and here the boy had for three years his 
schooling, but at thirteen began to earn his 



6 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

living by binding himself as apprentice in the 
office of the Free Press, at Burlington, then 
owned by H. B. Stacy, where he served for 
six years. Mr. Houghton liked in a quiet 
way to observe anniversaries; and when he 
was in Vermont in 1894, he visited the Free 
Press office in Burlington on the 27th of 
October, and stood by the window where, on 
that same day fifty-eight years before, he 
took his place at the case as an apprentice. 
Of his first journey from his home into the 
world, where he was to make his way at first 
on foot, as it were, he wrote, nearly sixty 
years after : — 

" On October 26, 1836, hours before dawn, 
I started in the mail-coach from Bradford, 
on the Connecticut River, for Burlington, on 
Lake Champlain, to be initiated into a know- 
ledge of printing, an occupation which I have 
followed chiefly since that time until the pres- 
ent, and am still in my humble way engaged 
in it. On the way over the hiQs from Brad- 
ford to Montpelier, a heavy snow-storm was 
falling, and the apple-trees were loaded with 
frozen apples. At high noon of that day we 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 7 

halted for dinner in this village [Montpelier], 
then as now the capital of the State. I re- 
member with what wonder my boyish eyes 
looked upon the State House, then standing 
on this site, with its tall columns, and with 
what admiration they rested on the member 
from my native town, dressed in the tradi- 
tional blue coat with brass buttons, the usual 
apparel of statesmen of that day, so very dif- 
ferent from the farmer's frock in which I had 
been accustomed to see him in his native vil- 
lage. Many hours after dark we arrived in 
Burlington, having made a journey of eighty 
miles during the day." 

It was while he was in the printing-of&ce 
that he had an encounter which he liked to 
relate in after years for its curious connection 
with a large interest in his business life. One 
day a pale, slim man came into the office, and 
showed the young compositor a printed list of 
words which he carried with him. " My lad," 
he said, " when you use these words, wiU you 
please spell them according to this list?" — 
theater, center, and the like. It was Noah 
Webster, who was traveling about the coun- 



8 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

try, and, with the shrewdness which sent him 
to the censors of spelling, was visiting the 
printing-offices, and persuading the composi- 
tors to adopt his reforms. Webster had 
already published his dictionary, but the 
young printer was to be one of the principal 
agents in making the book in its ultimate 
form the great handbook of the American 
people. 

Captain Houghton and his family had mean- 
while made another move to Nunda Valley, 
in Livingston County, New York ; but Daniel 
Houghton was a student in the University of 
Vermont, at Burlington, where he was looking 
forward to the life of a clergyman. He kept 
a brotherly watch over the young apprentice, 
and stood to him very much in loco parentis. 
There is a letter by him to his mother, written 
in June, 1839, which carries with it a very 
distinct air of authority. His father was at 
the time in Bradford, and the mother and son 
seemed to be arranging in his absence what 
should be done about the boy's education. 

"Maria mentioned," Daniel Houghton 
writes, "that you would like to have Oscar 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 9 

come home and go to school there a year. 
Did I know that you had a good school, a 
preceptor amply competent to teach the 
classics, I should have no objections to his 
going. I wish to have him fit for college; 
he might possibly do it in one year, but it 
probably will be better for him not to enter 
until two years from August. I intend to 
have him go to school steady after next Au- 
gust, whether he goes home or not. The only 
objection to his going home would be that 
the advantages would not be as good as here, 
and the expense of the journey. Should it 
be desirable to have him at home a year, and 
should the school be suitable, I have no objec- 
tions to have him go home in the fall. Please 
inform me respecting the school, — whether 
the teacher is a graduate and of what college, 
etc." 

The work in the printing-office confirmed 
the young apprentice in rudimentary know- 
ledge, and after a long day spent in manual 
labor he applied himseK to books in the even- 
ing, but in the fall of 1839 it was decided 
that he should go home to Nunda and enter 



10 HENRY OSCAE HOUGHTON 

the academy there. He appears to have spent 
at least two years there and at Wyoming, for 
another migration of the family had shifted 
the scene from Nunda to Portage, near Wyo- 
ming. How much he was master of himself 
at this time is curiously evident in a bundle 
of faded boyish compositions, translations, and 
exercises in a debating club. Both the hand- 
writing and the spelling bear testimony to the 
influence upon him of his work at type-setting, 
and, though the literary form is not altogether 
smooth, there is a vigor and independence in 
the thought which indicates a good degree of 
maturity and self-reliance. It strikes one as 
f eHcitous that he should be writing with deter- 
mination on Decision of Character, — an essay 
which interested him so much that he pro- 
duced a " revised edition " a couple of months 
later ; and that he should have amused him- 
self, in a composition on the New Year, with 
the following calculation : — 

"Perhaps we might very profitably, as we 
commence the new year, look back and see 
how we have spent the old one. Allowing 
seven hours for sleep, there are seventeen hours 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 11 

in each day to be improved in some way or 
other ; and, allowing another three hours for 
work or play (as the case may be), we have 
fourteen hours left, about half of which we 
generally spend in school ; and probably there 
are not many of us, if any, who study more than 
four hours out of school, which leaves three 
hours in each day unaccounted for, and, not 
reckoning Sundays, we have 313 days in a year ; 
and, losing at the rate of three hours in each 
day, at the end of the year we should come 
out minus thirty-nine days and three hours, 
and in ten years something over a whole year ; 
and, taking into consideration the maxim that 
* time is money,' we might suppose each hour 
to be worth a sixpence, which would amount 
in one year to $58.68f , and in ten years to 
$586.87i." 



n 



Apparently, the year before entering col- 
lege was spent again at the case in Burlington, 
but in the fall of 1842, when he was nineteen 
years old, he was able to pass an examination 
and enter the University of Vermont. He 
used to say that he had three York shillings 
in his pocket when he entered college, two of 
which he used for getting himself in order in 
his room, leaving twelve and a half cents for 
further expenses. But he had been inured 
to hardship, he had perforce acquired the 
most frugal habits, and he had the very great 
advantage of familiarity with a craft which 
gave him considerable support as he worked 
his way through college. He was, however, 
chiefly indebted for his support to the gen- 
erous aid of Mr. David Scott, who had mar- 
ried his sister Stella, and was engaged in 
business in Alabama. He used in later life 
to illustrate the stringency of his means at 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 13 

this time by telling how he received a letter 
on which the postage had not been prepaid. 
Between his absolute lack of the needed 
twenty-five cents and his resentment at being 
forced by his correspondent to pay, he was 
inclined to refuse the letter ; but curiosity and 
hope conspired to defeat his pride, and he 
borrowed the money, opened the letter, and 
found it contained money from his brother- 
in-law, or at any rate a promise of aid. The 
following extracts from letters written by Mr. 
Scott to his young brother-in-law during these 
years will indicate, brief as they are, not only 
the ready aid which he gave, but the generous 
spirit and the friendly counsel accompanying 
the aid: — 

September 1, 1843. — "A letter from 
Stella after she arrived at Dana, Massachu- 
setts, tells me that you are straitened for 
funds to progress in your college course. If 
you will inform me what amount is necessary 
to carry you through, I will endeavor to assist 
you. In a few months exchanges will be 
down, and I can then remit you the necessary 
sums from time to time to defray your ex- 



14 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

penses, which you can refund at your conven- 
ience. . . . 

"I am in hopes you will improve your 
time, and when you get through college come 
South and get into business of some kind." 

April, 1844. — "I enclose twenty dollars 
in South Carolina money, which is the best I 
can find at present. I hope it will reheve 
your present difficulties as long as it will last. 
I shall be pleased to hear from you fre- 
quently, how you are getting along, and it 
will afford me pleasure to assist you from 
time to time as you may stand in need. Do 
not be backward in letting your wants be 
known." 

1845. — "I enclose |50; let me know 
when you will stand in need of more funds. 

"Please acknowledge the receipt of this 
amount. 

"It will be necessary for you to study book- 
keeping, so as to understand accounts. If 
you could improve the appearance of your 
handwriting, it would be desirable." 

The University of Vermont at that time 
was a modest institution, with the Rev. Dr. 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 15 

John Wheeler for President, and a Faculty 
of half a dozen professors, of whom the Rev. 
Joseph Torrey, Professor of Intellectual and 
Moral Philosophy, was perhaps the most emi- 
nent. There was a library of about ten thou- 
sand volumes, and the body of students did 
not much exceed a hundred in number. But 
no one who knows the spirit of our New Eng- 
land colleges in the early half of this century 
will be disposed to measure the worth of the 
training received by the meagreness of equip- 
ment or the paucity of numbers. The Uni- 
versity of Vermont, like other New England 
colleges, took its impress from a few control- 
ling spirits, and, at the time when Mr. 
Houghton was in Burlington, the Marsh 
family was a prominent factor in collegiate 
life, and James Marsh was the prophet of 
Coleridge in America. It is a coincidence 
that one of Mr. Houghton's contemporaries 
at college, a young instructor then, afterward 
the well-known Professor W. G. T. Shedd, 
became, through the same influence, the 
American editor of Coleridge's writings, and 
that one of the latest enterprises in which 



16 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

Mr. Houghton took an active interest was the 
publication in America of Coleridge's Letters. 
He was unmistakably affected in his judg- 
ment by the strong attraction this writer had 
for him in college days. There was a philo- 
sophical and theological bent given to the 
minds of students at that time, which is ap- 
parent in the system of education followed in 
the University. As if to justify such a name 
for the institution, the studies were divided 
into four departments, under the names of 
the Department of EngHsh Literature, the 
Department of Languages, the Department of 
Mathematics and Physics, and the Department 
of PoHtical, Moral, and Intellectual Philoso- 
phy, which comprised recitations and lectures 
in Political Economy, the Principles and Forms 
of Government, Laws of Nature and Nations, 
Ethics, Natural Theology, and Evidences of 
Revealed ReHgion, Logic, and Metaphysics. 
In later life Mr. Houghton was a strong ad- 
vocate of the country college. He was pre- 
judiced in its favor no doubt by the fact of 
his own history, but a strong ground for his 
confidence lay in his recognition of the per- 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 17 

sonal force exerted by a few men of power 
upon a small body of students, and especially 
of the gradual convergence of prescribed 
courses toward an ultimate philosophical 
statement of the doctrines which should fur- 
nish the young student with a rational law 
of living. 

The records of the University Hbrary give 
some indication of the character of the read- 
ing in which Mr. Houghton engaged inde- 
pendently of his regular college work. It is 
a meagre list for the four years, not more 
than thirty books in all ; and some of these 
were clearly direct aids to prescribed study. 
It is probable that, with his irregular prepara- 
tion for college and his necessity to eke out 
his means with labor, he had little leisure for 
many excursions in literature ; but the qual- 
ity of his reading shows the man who throve 
on a strong diet. The first book he took 
out in his Freshman year was the first volume 
of Winthrop's History of New England, 
following it shortly with a two-volume work 
by Charles Mills on the History of the 
Crusades, A long gap, from the middle of 



18 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

October to the middle of March, was closed 
by William Godwin's Enquirer, and before 
the year closed he had taken out three vol- 
umes of Dr. Johnson's writings, Tanner's 
Narrative of Adventures among the Indi- 
ans, and two volumes of Leighton's works^ 
In his Sophomore year he appears to have 
drawn but a single book, a volume of Shake- 
speare; in his Junior year his reading was 
mainly in ancient and Enghsh history. His 
Senior year shows half the entire list : he was 
making his way in Scotch metaphysics, but he 
was also reading Kent's Commentaries, Mil- 
ton's prose ,works, Butler's Analogy, Fenelon, 
and Bacon's works. When recalling his col- 
lege days, he was wont to speak of Milton in 
his prose writings as having a strong influ- 
ence on his intellectual life, especially with re- 
gard to the theological problems which he was 
engaged in solving; he pondered at times the 
expediency of issuing a library edition of Mil- 
ton's prose ; he looked forward to publishing 
Leighton in his Library of Old Divines, and 
there were few of his publications in which he 
took greater pride than the edition of Bacon's 



HENKY OSCAR HOUGHTON 19 

works edited by James Spedding, reprinted 
by him at the outset of his publishing career, 
upon terms which made Mr. Spedding a warm 
advocate of American publishers' modes of 
business. 

With the package of school compositions is 
another of similar essays written during the 
college course. Some of them help to explain 
the choice of books from the college library, 
and the subjects have somewhat the air of 
having been assigned by a college officer. 
"The Idea of Liberty among the Ancient 
Greeks," "The Study of the Classics," "Im- 
portance of Mathematical Studies," "Beauty 
of Thought makes Beauty of Style," " What 
is Education," are the set pieces in the old- 
fashioned display of collegiate pyrotechnics. 
But now and then there is a phrase, a turn of 
thought, a whole paper it may be, which has 
a personal interest as showing how the young 
student thought and felt, or what was engag- 
ing his mind. The presidential election which 
occurred in his Junior year was that in which 
Clay played the losing game against Polk. 
The tariff of 1842 had become a party watch- 



20 HENKY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

word, and the annexation of Texas was a burn- 
ing question. Like many other ardent young 
men of his day, Mr. Houghton was an enthusi- 
astic follower of Clay, and he was old enough 
to have shared in the slogan of " Tippecanoe 
and Tyler too," and to have shared likewise 
in the disappointment over Tyler's defection. 
In one of his college essays he defines his 
political position. " One of the parties," he 
says, " as it seems to me, has fixed its stand 
upon principles, while the other has broken 
away, in a measure, from all principle, and 
seeks to build it all up by flattering the 
caprices of the multitude. The one advocates 
a sound national currency, protection to home 
industry, and an equitable distribution of the 
sales of the public lands ; while the other sets 
forth no principles definitely, but promises to 
do everything well, if the people will only let 
them have the power. During the adminis- 
tration of the government for five or six years 
previous to 1840 [when the Whigs came into 
power imder Harrison], the country was com- 
pelled to undergo a series of changes, experi- 
ments, and expedients, when the whole nation 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 21 

arose in its might and shook off its thralldom. 
But, seeing its anticipations all blasted, it sank 
back into lethargy. But now, hope having 
dawned upon it once more, the whole country 
is rising at the ' blast of the bugle ' which is 
being reechoed from Maine to Georgia, and 
from Boston harbor to the Mississippi." 

He devoted one of his compositions to an 
inquiry into the policy of annexing Texas. 
His argument against annexation was based 
on the moral weakness which overtook nations 
when they turned their attention to the ex- 
tension of territory, rather than to the devel- 
opment of internal resources. Such lust of 
power, he maintains, leads to party strife and 
distraction within the state itself ; and, after 
citing Greece, Rome, and England, he sud- 
denly turns for an instance of comparison 
to Delaware and New York, " the former of 
which is one of the smallest States in the 
Union, is out of debt, and seems to be thriv- 
ing, from the fact that she is not torn by 
sectional interests. The latter is one of the 
largest, and possesses, perhaps, a greater va- 
riety of resources than any other State in 



22 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

the Union. But at one time she is embark- 
ing largely in internal improvements ; at an- 
other she is stopping her pubHc works, and 
allowing them to go to ruin when well-nigh 
completed. Now she is borrowing money 
to defray the expenses of government, now 
levying a direct tax to pay her debts, just as 
sectional interests or parties predominate. 

" The interests of every part of the Union at 
the present time seem to be at war with each 
other, but it is so equally balanced that it is 
confidently hoped that there will always be a 
sufficient number of the wise and honorable 
in our national councils to prevent one por- 
tion of the Union triumphing over another. 
But add the foreign territory of Texas to our 
Union, and the worst results are to be feared 
from the clashing of sectional interests, — 
nothing less than anarchy and disunion, and 
when that day arrives it will be truly said 
that ' our glory has departed.' " 

The turn of the argument is a characteris- 
tic one, for Mr. Houghton often showed in 
discussion a curious faculty for seizing upon 
some illustration whose pertinency was not 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 23 

immediately apparent, but which, by some 
involution of his mind, had an effectiveness 
for him, and served by its picturesqueness or 
other striking quality to drive home the point 
he was making. His Commencement part was 
upon " The Necessity and True Method of a 
System of State Education." It is interesting 
to notice, that though he drew from the col- 
lege library Grimke on Education and an Ab- 
stract of Massachusetts School Reports for 
the years 1838-1840, his oration began with a 
quotation from Bacon, took in Milton by the 
way, and showed the influence of Coleridge in 
the closing paragraph. 

" Since the state is admitted to have a moral 
being, with moral attributes and a moral char- 
acter, the system of education which it adopts 
should be nothing else but a means of self- 
education ; and this must be limited and di- 
rected, as has been intimated, by the wants 
which it feels. If, then, it would have a con- 
tinued and healthful growth, it will strive to 
know its own wants, and will use, as far as 
possible, the means to satisfy them. Its phy- 
sical wants every nation feels to a greater or 



24 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

less extent ; but the higher wants which be- 
long to the intellectual and moral nature are 
not so soon awakened, and for that very rea- 
son, when they begin to be felt, their claims 
assume a paramount importance. The high- 
est energies of the state should be directed 
to their satisfaction; since, by seeking the 
highest moral and intellectual culture of all 
its members, it wiU inevitably seek its own, 
so that in the state and the individual will 
be realized the vision of the prophet, ^ whose 
appearance and work was, as it were, a wheel 
in the middle of a wheel, and whithersoever 
the spirit went the wheels went, for the spirit 
of the living creature was in the wheels/ " 

The class of 1846, of which Mr. Houghton 
was a member, contained in its last year twenty- 
four students, and of that number about a 
fourth are still living, fifty years after gradua- 
tion. One of the number, Mr. Neziah Wright 
Bhss, at the time hailing from Bradford, and 
now a resident of Chicago, has kindly given me 
his recollections of his f eUow-student. He had 
known the Houghton family in Bradford; in- 
deed, a sister of his at one time was engaged 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 25 

to be married to a brother of Mr. Houghton. 
Oscar Houghton he had known but slightly, 
since he was but a boy when he left Bradford. 
" Some days," Mr. Bliss says, " or perhaps 
weeks, after my entering with the Freshman 
class of 1842 at Burlington, a tall young man, 
slim and very much bent or bowed, as homely of 
feature as Abraham Lincoln, and as awkward 
and ungainly in person and manners, came up 
to me on the campus, and asked if I was Nezi 
Bliss (my name is Neziah) of Bradford, telling 
me he was Oscar Houghton. Of course I knew 
all about him at once (as to his antecedents), 
and was glad to know him again. I was very 
small for my age (I was then sixteen), and, 
having been prepared to enter a year before 
(but remained at the academy a year longer on 
account of size as much as age), I was unusually 
well prepared for those days. Several of my 
former classmates at the academy were then 
Sophomores at various colleges, — one now 
Rev. 0. T. Lanphear, at BurHngton. I found 
that Oscar had been, in fact was then, a type- 
setter in a printing-office, and was so poorly 
prepared to enter college that he could barely 



26 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

squeeze in. The reason for this was entirely 
legitimate: he had to support himself, while 
preparing to enter college, by an industry that 
was not very lucrative ; and he had to attend 
the academy as he could, and oftentimes study 
by himself without instructors. AU this he 
told me, and, without in any way announcing 
any boastful determination, said he was going 
to try it and see if he could catch up and keep 
up ; that it would be hard work, as he would 
still have his living to make, as well as his tui- 
tion and expenses of text-books and clothing 
to meet. In entering, he registered himself as 
of Portage, New York, which was doubtless 
the place to which his father's family removed 
from Bradford, and his room the first year 
was No. 4 South College ; the next year he 
roomed and boarded at Mrs. Coon's ; the third 
year he again roomed in college (North Col- 
lege, No. 2), registering those two years as of 
Burlington ; but in our Senior year he roomed 
at Mr. Cook's, and registered as of Dana, Mas- 
sachusetts, and so wrote his name and place 
of birth, as well as date, in iny autographs of 
the class. Of course, under these adverse cir- 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 27 

cumstances, Mr. Houghton's beginnings in the 
class were inconspicuous, and little attention 
was paid to him at first by the class gener- 
ally, in which were a considerable number of 
well-prepared students of mature age, notably 
Aiken and Lull, Belcher and Divoll, Hitch- 
cock and Jameson, May and Prentiss, Steb- 
bings and Wainwright, and later Nelson ; but 
being a personal friend, I could not but no- 
tice, and did notice, how gradually, day by 
day and week by week, Oscar Houghton was 
gaining and growing, delivering better recita- 
tions and becoming better known to his class, 
more, I am convinced, by his inveterate good- 
nature and his sterling honesty and integrity 
than by his increase in scholarship. It was 
the custom for all the students of that day to 
attend prayers in the chapel at sunrise and 
sunset the year round, and rehgious services 
at the chapel at first, and later at the White 
Church (so called), unless a permit had been 
obtained to attend elsewhere. I obtained a 
permit to attend St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 
then in charge of Bishop Hopkins, a man of 
great force. Houghton, being a member of 



28 HENEY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

the Methodist Church at Burlington, of course 
attended there. One Sunday he invited me 
to go with him to church, which I did, and 
found carpeted aisles, cushioned seats, chan- 
dehers, an upholstered pulpit, and a fashion- 
ably dressed, beribboned and bejeweled au- 
dience. I was taken by surprise, as the 
Methodists of my native town insisted on 
the rule of excessive plainness and simplicity, 
and on making the seats, as well as psalms, 
penitential. I called Oscar's attention to the 
difference, and asked if he was sure of the 
place. He was embarrassed, but got out of 
the dilemma by explaining that, even in the 
Methodist Church, what was the enforced rule 
in poorer neighborhoods could not be en- 
forced in wealthier ones. 

" At that time there were only two public 
societies in the college, the Phi Sigma Nu and 
the University Institute, and the practice was, 
after sufficient time had elapsed, for the upper 
classes to form some estimate of the charac- 
ter and capacities of the Freshmen, to take 
the class Hst, and for the society, which for 
that year had the choice, to select the first or 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 29 

second name on the list, and then take every 
other one in the list to its end, so that one 
half o£ each class went to each society some- 
what by lot. Houghton and I both fell to 
the Phi Sigma Nu. At that time the parties 
in the societies were divided on the lines of 
Church or Non-Church, Liberals or Conserva- 
tives, but, with the usual exaggeration of col- 
lege Hfe, were denominated Blues and Bloats. 
Without any essential reason on either of our 
parts, Houghton fell to the Blues and I to 
the Bloats, and my party was in power in 
holding the offices during our entire college 
course ; but we always elected Houghton to an 
office, generally that of treasurer, on account 
of the universal love and respect with which 
he was regarded, for he never in his Hfe (I 
believe) made himself offensive in any way to 
any one. Early in the history of our society 
life, Oscar Houghton began to take part in the 
debates. To do so was by no means general j 
a few members generally were the speakers, 
and the great mass of members were listeners 
only. It was as hard, up-hill work for Mr. 
Houghton to take part in the debates as it 



30 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

was to work up in his recitations. He was 
troubled immensely with what I suppose the 
French call Tnauvaise honte. He would get 
up, bent over almost in a semicircle, and be- 
gin a stammering, hesitating, awkward, lum- 
bering speech, but nevertheless always with 
a thought or idea at the bottom which he 
could not express or get out; he would be 
openly laughed at by some and pitied by his 
more intimate friends, and he would give up 
and sit down, laughing himself with the others 
at his own failure, and by that means relieving 
both those who laughed and those who pitied 
of all embarrassment ; but he would soon be 
up again, and sooner or later he would some- 
how and after a fashion express a thought on 
the subject under discussion that would com- 
mand the attention and respect of aU. This 
went on in the society and in the class-room, 
and not so slowly as you might suppose, be- 
cause, when we held our Sophomore exhi- 
bition. May 16, 1844, Houghton had so 
advanced that he was assigned the honorable 
place of the closing speech of the afternoon, 
his subject being a characteristic one, for the 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 31 

handling of which he was evidently peculiarly 
well qualified, to wit, ^ The True Ideal of a 
Manly Character ; ' while to your late Judge 
John W. May, the oldest and most accom- 
plished scholar of the class, was assigned the 
closing address of the evening, his subject 
being ' Heroism.' At our Junior exhibition, 
Mr. Houghton opened the evening exercises 
by an address on ' The Idea of Liberty among 
the Ancient Greeks,' and again, in our grad- 
uation exercises, opened the second session, 
his subject being ' The Necessity and True 
Method of a System of State Education.' 

" His success and standing in his class in 
scholarship was equal to, if not greater than, 
his success as an essayist ; and at the close of 
our college years no man commanded more 
the respect of the class than did Mr. Hough- 
ton, and I am sure no man was so universally 
esteemed and loved. If I were to estimate 
the elements of his character which brought 
to him the great measure of success that was 
accorded to him in his Hfe, I should say it was 
his entire and incorruptible honesty and in- 
tegrity, bred in the bone and reaching clear 



32 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

through, patent upon the face of all his acts. 
This, supplemented by his exceeding kindness 
of heart and never-failing good-nature, gave 
him those advantages that commanded the 
success he met and deserved. . . . 

" And now, Mr. Scudder, I have written to 
you my impressions of my friend and class- 
mate, just as I should wish you to have writ- 
ten me had I inquired instead of you, giving 
you the facts as they were at the time, not 
undertaking (after the event) to make out 
any great things as earnests or prognostica- 
tions of the success afterwards attained. Mr. 
Houghton never seemed to me, as in the case 
of some I have known, to set up any special 
ideal to which he would strive to attain. I 
don't think he ever thought of ' aiming high,' 
or particularly of ^aiming' at all, but I do 
think he quietly and unostentatiously was de- 
termined to do as thoroughly and well as he 
could whatever his hand found to do, and 
that he in everything and everywhere con- 
scientiously did his work, leaving the conse- 
quences to follow as a matter of course, with- 
out in any case particularly contemplating 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 33 

them ; and I believe it was this that largely 
commanded the confidence o£ his business 
associates in Cambridge, which to an unusual 
degree contributed to his success. He has 
gone, but he has left a most fragrant memory 
among his friends, and to his family a name 
and a character that will command the utmost 
respect of all." 

To this vivid reminiscence by Mr. Bliss 
may be added the memorabilia of other of 
Mr. Houghton's surviving classmates. Mr. 
Wilham H. Dodge, now of Westboro', Mas- 
sachusetts, writes : — 

" I was not intimately acquainted with Mr. 
Houghton outside of his immediate college 
duties, but in the class and lecture room I sat 
near him during our entire college course. 
He was one of the older members of our 
class, being, I think, nearly twenty-four at 
graduation, and had then a well-developed, 
steady, rehable, and manly character. 

" As I remember him, while not particularly 
excelling in any department of college study, 
he never failed or did poor work, but was a 
well-balanced, all-round, good average student. 



34 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

His written productions were always heavily 
loaded with good, sound sense. Had he spent 
less time in the printing-office, working for 
money to help pay his expenses, he would 
doubtless have taken higher rank in college 
work. I think he gave very Httle if any time 
to college games or social pleasures that would 
not yield some profit to present or coming 
real Hfe-work." 

Mr. Horace R. Stebbings, of Chicago, adds 
his recollection in these words : — 

" I am glad to contribute any information, 
however little, in relation to the college life of 
my friend Houghton, for he was my friend 
and I always called him ^ Oscar.' We were 
classmates for four years. Our time — his 
time especially — was fully occupied. We 
had fewer leisure hours together perhaps 
than students now have. We often worked 
together, however, and saw new things and 
realized new relations as a result of our work. 
How can I cut it short ? Houghton was one 
of the most genial, kind-hearted young men of 
them all, and hence perhaps I was drawn to 
him. It always seemed to me that I was his 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 35 

welcome companion, — persona grata in mod- 
ern phrase, — and I loved him for that. He 
was lightly built in frame, and so seemed 
taller in stature than most ; deliberate of 
speech ; of lively intelligence ; an earnest, 
honest, unsophisticated Yankee boy. He was 
a printer, as you know, and earned money by 
his art while in college. Most young men of 
that time ' paddled their own canoe.' He set 
types, read proof, etc., in fact did almost 
everything at times, in the printing-office of 
Chauncy Goodrich, of Burlington, Vermont. 
There he met Father O'Calligan, an amiable 
old priest of the town, who wrote books of va- 
rious sorts, one Of Usury. He and Hough- 
ton together corrected the proofs. The old 
gentleman would sometimes get inspired re- 
reading his own text, and stop the really 
useful work and consume the time lecturing 
Houghton, his audience of one, on the topics 
of the chapters. Houghton said he did n't 
think it made any difference to him, since he 
was paid by the hour. The two became really 
attached to each other, — the one a highly 
educated, confirmed old Papist, the other a 



36 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

young' Protestant student, and a zealous Meth- 
odist at that. It always seemed to me a funny 
relationship, but serves to show how very easy 
it is to throw away dogma when warm hearts 
and loving natures meet. 

" I remember how we often picked out the 
Greek together by the roots, and wondered 
how far we should ever go to reap the ripe 
crops that grow out of these. Houghton, 
like many other students, did not like to be 
hindered and limited by the study of what 
seemed to him unimportant details. We were, 
for instance, put upon an indigestible diet of 
Greek prosody for a while. Houghton said : 
* I wonder if Professor thinks I care any- 
thing about the feet of those old Greek poets. 
I care a jrreat deal more about their heads.* " 

When Mr. Houghton was seventy years 
old, a notice of the fact in the press brought 
a brief note of congratulation to him from 
another classmate, J. W. Taylor, of Syracuse, 
New York, in which the writer says : " It 
must be now near fifty years since I became 
acquiiinted with you, daily toihng up the steep 
ascent of College Hill, in Burlington, to the 



HENKY OSCAR HOUGHTON 37 

recitations in Alma Mater. I remember it 
seemed to me a wonderful achievement that 
you should be able to set type all day at the 
case, and still find time to study and make 
the three trips from down town and back 
again and have any vitality left ! Through 
the lapse of time I can see the wonderful 
nerve it required, and the ii'on will to back it. 
But the same determined spirit has borne its 
fruit through these fifty years." 

It is pleasant to show the response to this 
friendly spirit of his classmates, m a letter 
which Mr. Houghton wrote to Mr. Stebbings, 
December 1, 1887 : — 

4 Park Street, Boston, 
December 1, 1887. 

My old Friend and Classmate Steb- 
bings, — I have often thought of you, and 
was very glad to receive your photograph. 
I supposed it represented you, although it 
was very different from the stubbed young 
man that I knew in college; and I should 
have responded, but I did not know where to 
address you, until I met Jameson, who kindly 
gave me your address, and agreed to be the 



38 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

medium through which I could convey my 
shadow to you in return for yours. I think 
it is very pleasant to have the faces of our old 
friends, even if the gray hairs have begun to 
show. I think I am a little younger than I 
was forty years ago when we were together, 
and I am quite anxious to know whether you 
retain that umbrella that you broke over the 
head of the Sophomore who was trying to 
intrude himselE into your room without per- 
mission. 

I heard that Mr. Bliss was at Burlington 
this year at Commencement. I think I should 
have gone there to meet him alone if I had 
known he was to have been there. I was 
there a week or more after the Commence- 
ment, and heard of him. He and I were 
great friends in college, and I have always 
taken a kindly interest in him. I wish he 
would send me his photograph, and I shall be 
very glad to retaliate i£ he should do so. I 
am glad to believe that both you and he are 
prospered so far as this world's goods go, and 
I am delighted with the description of your 
family. I should be glad to see any of them 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 39 

if they come to Boston, and I should like to 
take you to my house and show you mine. I 
have three of the best girls that there are 
in the country, except yours, and they are a 
great comfort to me. I have a son also, who 
is with me in the business, and who has been 
married a year or more. My son Hves in the 
house he was born in, and my girls are still 
with me. 

Reciprocating heartily your blessings, and 
hoping we may meet either here or in Chicago, 
I am, as ever, 

Your friend, 

H. 0. Houghton. 



m 

When he was graduated from the Univer- 
sity of Vermont in 184:6, Mr. Houghton was 
in debt for his education to the amount of 
$300, but he was equipped for seeking his 
fortune with a college training, knowledge of 
a craft, good health, and indomitable energy. 
His intention, like that of many young grad- 
uates, was to take up school-teaching until 
the way opened for a permanent vocation; 
and he appears to have had a partial engage- 
ment for the winter of 1846-4:7 to teach in 
Hardwick, Massachusetts, not far from Dana, 
where his parents were now residing. But, 
missing the first opportunity which presented 
itself, he feU back upon his craft as a printer, 
and found also a chance to do reporter's 
work on the Boston Traveller. It is not 
improbable that the steps which led him into 
printing as a vocation were taken somewhat 
reluctantly; for a college education was re- 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 41 

garded in his youth as more distinctly the 
entrance upon one of the learned professions 
than it is to-day, and the exertions and sacri- 
fices required for securing such an education 
would seem scarcely justified by a mechani- 
cal occupation afterward. I never heard Mr. 
Houghton speak in this strain, but I have 
often heard him set a high value on the disci- 
plinary collegiate training of his day, which 
supposed hard intellectual labor for four years. 
Certainly in his case the effect of this training 
upon his success as a printer and captain of 
industry was very great. He was not espe- 
cially dexterous as a mechanic. His work at 
the case, to be sure, had given him facility in 
setting type, and I recall an odd illustration 
of special expertness which his practice had 
given him. He had no hking for games, but 
when his children were playing the familiar 
letter-game, which consists in constructing a 
word out of a jumble of letters, he would 
take the unassorted letters and arrange them 
at once in their proper order. He knew the 
parts of a printing-press, but he had not 
the skill which some master printers had, as 



42 HENKY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

the late Mr. Welch, for example, to take a 
press apart and put it together again. What 
he did have, the gift especially of his college 
training, was the power, so much more sub- 
stantial than mere empiricism, to make his 
experiments in his head, — to see what he 
wished to accomplish, and what means, me- 
chanical or other, were needed to produce the 
desired result. This power was unquestion- 
ably confirmed by many years of experience, 
so that his knowledge of what went to the 
making of a good book — paper, ink, cut of 
type, presswork — was unhesitating, but it 
was a power which sprang rather from the 
logical faculty behind the eye than from the 
eye and touch ; and it was, as I have said, a 
native gift trained and ordered by intellec- 
tual discipHne. 

Another element of success in his vocation 
which he brought with him from college was 
also a native gift, enhanced in value by colle- 
giate training, — the gift of good taste, that 
quality of selection and reserve which lies at 
the bottom of genuine success in any mechanic 
art that appeals in the last analysis to the cul- 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 43 

tivated eye and mind. It was an unfailing 
source of pleasure to him to examine the work 
of the great Itahan printers, whose masters 
were in turn the artists of the illuminated 
missals of the days before printing, and he 
never wearied of inculcating those fundamen- 
tal principles of good proportion and simpli- 
city which may be traced in aU the acceptable 
work from Aldus down. There was a certain 
rule of proportion for the printed page, which 
an architect once formulated for him ; it was 
a rule which mechanically confirmed what his 
own good taste had fixed independently ; and, 
in any discussion as to a proposed page, he 
was pretty sure to apply the rule as an author- 
ity, but he did not need the rule to satisfy 
himself : his eye was quite as trustworthy. 
It was the custom in the office, never inter- 
mitted to the last, to refer every specimen 
page and every title-page to him for approval, 
and no book could be carried forward or com- 
pleted until the letters H. 0. H. were upon 
these pages. 

" The fact has often been commented on," 
says Mr. Houghton in his address on Early 



44 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

Printing in America^ " that the printing o£ 
the first printers excelled in beauty of exe- 
cution that of any subsequent issues of the 
printing-press. The reason for this, I think, 
will be apparent when we consider that the 
first types were imitations of the chirography. 
of the monks, and from long experience and 
practice this chirography had come to be very 
beautiful ; but, as was inevitable when speed 
became an important element and the types 
became mechanical appHances, this love of 
beauty gave way, as has been the case always, 
to utihty and speed. The old German text, 
also, through the process of years, has gradu- 
ally given way to the more common Latin 
text, and, as we see in the modern newspaper, 
the process of deterioration still goes on in 
obedience to the demands of haste. There 
is a return now among the cultivated to the 
more careful printing of earlier times. An 
evidence that this early printing was, as near 
as could be, transcripts of the careful penman- 
ship of the old monks, can be seen in the 
great fohos in that remarkable library at 
Cairo, where it is difficult even for an expert, 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 45 

without close inspection, to say whetlier these 
books were printed or written." 

A brief series of letters to his parents after 
leaving the University, and before setting up 
for himself as a printer in Cambridge, gives in 
a random fashion Mr. Houghton's apparently 
desultory occupation for these two or three 
years. The letters give also, especially to 
those who knew him in his later years, curious 
little intimations of his temperament, and of 
the resolute spirit which attended him in the 
early reaching out after a definite plan of 
life. 

Boston, October 20, 1846. 

Dear Parents, — I found when I arrived 
in Worcester that the paper which had been 
sent me had been nearly a week on the road, 
and the situation had been filled up when I 
arrived, and therefore I came on to Boston the 
next morning. When I got here I found Pres- 
ident Wheeler at the hotel where I stopped, 
and he gave me a very flattering recommen- 
dation, by the aid of which I have succeeded 
in getting a situation for a month at least in 
the Daily Traveller office, one of the best 



46 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

papers in the city. My business is to be, if 
I am prospered so as to do it readily, that of 
reporter; that is, going about the city and 
picking up the news and writing it out for 
the paper, attending lectures and giving ac- 
counts of them. Perhaps I may come home 
at the end of the month, and perhaps stay 
longer. My salary is not very large at first, 
but if I remain and succeed well it is to be 
increased. I have found several acquaint- 
ances in the city, and by means of one of 
them I obtained board in a private family the 
first day I came here, so that it has not cost 
me as much as it would at a public house ; and 
I have earned about two dollars in cash in a 
printing-of&ce, besides going on top of Bun- 
ker Hill Monument, out to Cambridge, etc. ; 
and I am not at all sorry I came here; in 
fact it seems to me providential. 

I wish you would send me aU the letters 
and papers that have come for me since I left. 
If you wiU pay the postage on the letters, and 
get Mr. Russell or Johnson to do them all up 
in one package, they wiQ come cheaper than 
they would separately, as they will then come 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 47 

by weight. I£ you can send me some more 
stockings and my two best night-shirts by Mr. 
Russell, I should like it. They could proba- 
bly find me at the Daily Traveller office on 
Court Street. I wish the letters directed 
" Traveller Printing - office, Boston." I am 
anxious to hear from you, how you are get- 
ting along, and I will endeavor to write again 
soon if you answer this immediately. I think 
I shall be able to send you papers occasion- 
ally. I am very much pleased with Boston, 
and have been treated very courteously and 
kindly by gentlemen who were entire strangers 
to me. I spent an hour or two in the Hbrary 
of the University in Cambridge, which con- 
sists of 52,000 volumes. I called on Mrs. 
Chamberlin yesterday, and found her quite 
smart. 

Very affectionately your son, 

H. 0. Houghton. 

Boston, October 13, 1847. 
Deak Parents, — I am getting rather anx- 
ious to hear from you, as I have not heard 
a syllable since I left home. Neither have I 



48 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

heard anything from Marilla or Maria. Albert 
spent nearly two weeks in Boston, and has 
written to me two or three times since, short 
business letters. I bought a quantity of cran- 
berries for him a few days since. He and his 
family sailed from New York about the first 
of October. 

Soon after my return from home Mr. Dick- 
inson sold a large part of his establishment, 
but I was retained in his employ and promoted 
to the office of proof-reader, which is about 
the highest notch as to dignity in the printing- 
office. 

I saw in my paper last evening a little para- 
graph saying that a Mr. Haywood, a drover 
from Jaffrey, New Hampshire, had his pocket- 
book stolen from him, or else lost it, containing 
$3000 in bank-bills. He was in Brighton at 
the time. I feared from the description that 
it might be Elizabeth's husband. If so, they 
must feel very bad about it. 

I wrote to Mr. Scott that you would send 
him what cheese you could spare. Mother, if 
you will knit for me, or get them knit for me, 
three or four pairs of good substantial socks, 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 49 

I will pay you 50 cents a pair, or any price you 
please. I want them knit long, so that they 
will come up to the tops of my boots. I have 
a quantity of old clothes, such as my old over- 
coat, pantaloons, etc., which I would like to 
send home, if you would wish them, but I 
hardly know how to send them. I have not 
seen Russell this fall ; has he been down yet ? 
I hope he wiU call on me when he comes. 
I think my health is growing better, if any- 
thing. I am anxious to know how you are 
getting along, and I hope you will write to 
me, if not more than two lines, and direct 
Dickinson's Type Foundry, 4 Wilson Lane, 
Boston. My earnest prayer is that your last 
days may be made comfortable, and when you 
leave this world you may be prepared for a 
better habitation in another. 

Affectionately your son, 

Oscar. 

Boston, September 2, 1848. 

Dear Parents, — You will notice, by a 
circular that I sent to-day, that I have changed 
my place of business, as I intimated I might 



50 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

do when at home. Business declined at the 
Boston Type Foundry, so that they thought 
they could not afford to keep two proof-read- 
ers, and of course I was discharged. They 
expressed themselves perfectly satisfied with 
me, however, and gave me a letter of recom- 
mendation. Mr. Rand made me an offer soon 
after to come into his office and take in extra 
proof-reading, by which arrangement, if I am 
prospered, I hope to do better than I have 
been doing. 

The Traveller folks told me they wished to 
send me to Worcester to attend a Democratic 
Convention next Wednesday. If there are 
any delegates from your quarter, please to 
send some word by them. 

Did Daniel come home this summer ? Why 
did he not come to Boston ? Albert is not 
coming this summer, and Mr. Ready has not 
yet arrived. Do not fail to let me hear from 
you soon, and direct care of G. C. Rand & Co., 
No. 3 CornhiU. 

Affectionately your son, 

Oscar. 

P. S. I went on Wednesday last to Ply- 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 51 

mouth, and put my foot on the rock where 
the Pilgrims landed. 

The following is the circular referred to in 
the previous letter : — 

A CARD. 

TO PRINTERS, PUBLISHERS, AND AUTHORS. 

The undersigned, formerly proof -reader in Mr. 
S. N. Dickinson's stereotype foundry, has taken a 
desk in the office of G. C. Rand & Company for 
the purpose of accommodating those printers who 
may need extra assistance in proof-reading, or 
whose business will not warrant the constant em- 
ployment of a professional reader. By this ar- 
rangement, it is believed, proofs can be read with 
promptness and dispatch, and at about the same 
expense as in the office where the work of composi- 
tion is performed. 

If a long and varied experience, the facilities 
afforded by a regular collegiate education, and a 
thoroughly practical knowledge of printing, may 
tend in any degree to inspire confidence, it is 
hoped the undertaking may meet with encourage- 
ment. 

Attention given, also, to the preparation of 
manuscripts for the press when desired. 



52 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

KErERENCES. — Mr. S. Phelps ; James M. Shute, 
agent of the Boston Type and Stereotype Foundry; 
C. C. P. Moody, former partner of Mr. Dickinson ; 
Messrs. Freeman & Bolles ; Messrs. Andrews & 
Punchard, editors of The Daily Evening Travel- 
ler ; and a large number of authors and publishers. 

N. B. For reading first proofs, an intelligent 
boy provided to read copy without extra charge. 

H. O. Houghton. 

No. 3 COENHTLL, BoSTON, 

August 29, 1848. 

Boston, November 16, 1848. 
Dear Parents, — I was very agreeably 
surprised one morning in finding a letter on 
my desk from mother. I know not who 
brought it there, but I have not had such a 
treat for some time past. I thank you for 
your invitation to Thanksgiving, and designed 
to avail myself of it; my business, however, 
is of such a nature that I cannot tell possibly 
whether I can be there or not on that day. 
But I hope to be permitted to drop in upon 
you in the course of two or three weeks. I 
went to Connecticut, and made James * a visit 

1 An older brother, Rev. James Clay Houghton, of Granby, 
Conn. 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 53 

on Saturday last. I found them all well. 
They have a fine girl, some ten months old, 
with a white head and a deep-blue eye. James 
was away on Sunday, and did not return until 
Monday, and I had the visit with his family 
all to myself. I returned to Boston on Tues- 
day, after having had a very pleasant time. 

I have recently had an offer to go into busi- 
ness here which seems to me very favorable. 
Mr. Freeman, of the firm of Freeman & BoUes, 
who are among the best printers in the city, 
if not the very best, has offered to sell me one 
half of the of&ce for $100 down and the rest 
in yearly payments of $250 each. He esti- 
mates that the half of the office wiU be worth 
about $3000, which is to be left to referees 
to say. Messrs. Little & Brown, who are the 
most extensive publishers of law books in New 
England, if not in the United States, propose 
to make a contract with us to do aU their 
printing that we can do, at a stipulated price, 
which will probably of itself be sufficient to 
keep a large establishment in operation. They 
are building a large office in Cambridge, the 
rent of which is to be about half Freeman & 



64 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

BoUes are now paying in the city. Mr. Bolles 
has been in business here about twenty years, 
and offers to put his experience on a par with 
my education, if I will go in with him. Gen- 
tlemen here in the city have agreed to sign 
a note for me, by which I can raise $500 or 
$600. Persons here who are acquainted with 
the business tell me that it is a good oppor- 
tunity, and that we can probably make $2000 
a year clear of expenses. Mr. Scott ^ and 
James both speak very favorably of it, and 
James tried to raise some additional funds for 
me, but did not succeed. I will try and come 
home soon, and tell you more about it. Till 
then adieu. 

Affectionately your son, 

H. 0. Houghton. 

P. S. Albert has a daughter a month or 
two old. They call it Maria, I believe. Mr. 
Scott's family are well. He said nothing 
about the cheese. I have not heard from 
Marilla for a long time. Write soon. I am 
almost out of socks. 

^ Mr. David Scott, his brother-in-law. 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 55 

The last of these letters shows Mr. Hough- 
ton just on the eve of establishing himself in 
business with Mr. BoUes, but still lacking the 
funds needed to complete the bargain. There 
is a story that he was at work on the morning 
of the day when the option was to expire. 
There was a rap at the door, and, in response 
to his "Come in," there entered a countryman, 
who inquired, "Is this Oscar Houghton?" 
He was told that it was. " Well, now, Oscar, 
I 'm right glad to see you," said the stranger; 
"my wife Sarah said that when I came to 
Boston I must be sure and see her cousin 
Oscar." The visitor proved to be a well-to- 
do New England farmer. He inquired after 
his relative's affairs, and Mr. Houghton told 
him of his plans, and stated that the hour 
had come when he must give an answer to 
the offer made him, but that he must give up 
the chance for lack of the needed money. 
"How much do you lack, Oscar?" asked 
the farmer. "About five hundred dollars," 
was the reply. Whereupon the visitor, who 
had become thoroughly interested, offered to 
make up the amount in a loan. As nearly 



56 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

as can now be known, tlie amount wliicli Mr. 
Houghton raised was fifteen hundred dollars, 
one third of which was raised from friends on 
his promissory note, one third was lent by 
Mr. David Scott, and one third by his cousin's 
husband, Rufus Heywood, of East Jaffrey, 
New Hampshire. 

The office was first established on Reming- 
ton Street, in Cambridge, and a glimpse of 
the activity of the new business is seen in a 
paragraph of a letter to one of his sisters, 
written from Cambridge, March 5, 1849: 
"Your favor dated February 10 was not re- 
ceived until this evening. I had business in 
town, and went to the post-office and found 
it advertised. You know, I suppose, that I 
now live in Cambridge, and when you write 
again please direct there. I should be much 
gratified to see you, and hope I may have the 
opportunity before you leave on your mis- 
sion. I have been designing to visit home, if 
permitted so to do, about the first of April, 
but it would be very difficult for me to leave 
now. We have about thirty persons in our 
employ, are chock-full of business, and hardly 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 57 

settled yet. Please to let me know your 
plans definitely, as I am very desirous of see- 
ing you before you go." 

A year later lie was writing to his parents : 

Cambridge, February 18, 1850. 

Dear Parents, — I am getting quite anx- 
ious to hear from you, and I write with the 
hope that you will give me a few lines in 
return. Daniel was here a few days ago, and 
left here for Dana, and I suppose he told you 
all about me, and perhaps made a sorry story. 
I sent a gold dollar by him for mother, which 
I trust he delivered. Our business has given 
us a good deal of trouble, both before and 
since I was home, but we are getting along 
more smoothly, I think, now ; and I am con- 
fident, with the help of Providence, we shall 
prosper. The "strike" will, I think, work 
to our advantage in the end, as we get better 
prices now, and are driving a heavier business 
than ever. I suppose you saw in the Trav- 
eller an account of the " striking " one of 
our women received some time since. There 
has been quite a noise made about it. 



58 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

I received a letter from Maria a few days 
since ; she appeared to be in fine health and 
spirits. The Sioux had aU gone a-hunting, 
and she and Mr. Hancock had gone 200 
miles further north among the Winnebagoes, 
where the thermometer stood the first week 
or two in January at 27 and 30 degrees below 
zero. 

We shaU look for Albert in March. I 
think I shall try and coax him to go home. 
Harriet appears to be getting along finely, 
and likes Boston and Boston people much 
better than she did. Her father wrote that 
she might come home with Albert in March, 
but she wrote back she did not wish to go 
until faU. Harriet Fyler is keeping house 
this winter for Governor Collier, and has not 
yet gone to Wetumpka. 

Do let us hear how you are getting along, 
and if you are in need let me know it. May 
the Lord help you is the prayer of 

Your affectionate son, 

Oscar. 

The religious expression at the close of this 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 59 

letter was not a mere form of words. Mr. 
Houghton in his earliest years had been 
under the influence of the Congregational 
church, but the example of his eldest sister 
led him to cast in his lot with the Meth- 
odists. During his college days his read- 
ing and thinking had at one time led him 
to question the doctrinal basis of his re- 
ligion, and he was inclined for a while to 
the Unitarian statement ; but he worked out 
the problem with the result of becoming 
more securely established on the foundations 
of his early faith, at the same time that he 
acquired a habit of mind which gave him 
intellectual sympathy with a wide range of 
religious expression. Dean Huntington, of 
Boston University, wrote of him : " He did 
not care always to do what was simply con- 
ventional, or the thing that some one else 
expected him to do, but he had clear ideas of 
duty as he saw it, and this duty he was glad 
to do with all his strength. His type was 
ethical. The emotional kind of piety did not 
affect him deeply. He laid the emphasis of his 
belief upon integrity, justice, frugality, self- 



60 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

respect, and charity to tlie suffering and 
needy." It is a confirmation of the sturdy 
character of his loyalty to the Methodist form 
of religion, which he beHeved to be the most 
practical order and the freest from the perils 
which beset institutional religion, that he never 
swerved from an identification with it, though 
the engagement to be married, which he 
formed at the beginning of his career, was 
with a member of the Congregational Church ; 
and he was brought into intimate and very 
admiring relations with her family, though 
he married afterward a member of the Baptist 
communion, and though, as years went on, 
his wife and some of his own children passed 
over into the Episcopal Church. The intimate 
connection with the Methodist Church, though 
it brought him into positions of service and 
responsibility in the denomination, did not 
restrict or narrow his sympathy. He had a 
very great appreciation of the work of the 
American Board of Commissioners for For- 
eign Missions; and he was wont to dilate 
upon the admirable organization of the Rom- 
ish Church, as well as upon the great impor- 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 61 

tance of the contention of that church that 
education of the young should be primarily 
reHgious. It was not merely that his busi- 
ness brought him into close relations with 
intellectual men of various creeds, and that 
his business sagacity forbade him to make the 
lines of his enterprise coincide with the Knes 
of his ecclesiastical relationship, but his nature 
was catholic in its sympathy ; he was at once 
too large a man to be narrowly sectarian, or 
to be religiously indifferent. 

Upon first coming to Boston he had con- 
nected himself with the Bromfield Street 
Methodist Episcopal Church, and after estab- 
lishing himself in Cambridge, he returned for 
a while to that church home. Dr. Warren, 
now President of Boston University, was pas- 
tor of the church during a portion of that 
time, and writes : — 

" He was the Assistant Superintendent of 
the Sunday-school of the Bromfield Street 
Church when, with less than four years' expe- 
rience in the ministry, I was sent thither to be 
the pastor of such men as he, and of yet older 
and riper saints, such as Mother Monroe, 



62 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

Jacob Sleeper, Isaac Rich, David Snow, and 
others of their generation. Mr. Houghton 
was already a man of mark in the goodly 
congregation that filled the house. It was 
natural that it should be so. He was a man 
of liberal education, clear-headed, warm- 
hearted, prosperous in business, one of the 
comparatively few who came to church in his 
own family carriage, driving all the way from 
his Cambridge home, yet ready to remain to 
attend the Sunday-school and to do his part 
in the work of the church. Whenever I now 
think of those days, and realize that he was 
riper than his pastor by ten or more years of 
Christian experience and of world-experience, 
I marvel that he could have Hstened so atten- 
tively, and that he could have evinced his 
friendly feelings in such manifold and encour- 
aging methods as he did." 

There was another reason why Mr. Hough- 
ton clung to his Boston connection. He had 
made the acquaintance of Miss Elizabeth Har- 
ris, and the acquaintance had ripened into 
love, so that an engagement of marriage took 
place; but Miss Harris was frail in health 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 63 

and was attacked by consumption, a more dis- 
tinctive New England disease then than now, 
and died, so that the marriage did not take 
place. Many of Mr. Houghton's friends will 
remember the strong and kindly presence in 
his household of Miss Mary Harris, "Aunt 
Mary," as she was familiarly known, the real 
aunt of Miss Elizabeth Harris, and the titular 
aunt of the young family that afterward grew 
up under her eye, for she made her home with 
Mr. Houghton for many years before her 
death; the respect and affection he had for 
her, and the confidence she had in him, were 
manifest to all who knew the two together. 
How much this beautiful connection meant 
may be seen from the impulse which led Mrs. 
Houghton to give to her eldest daughter the 
name of Elizabeth Harris. 



IV 

The quarters in Eemington Street soon be- 
came insufficient for the growing business, 
and there was need of a more substantial 
establishment. As has been seen, the most 
important connection of the new firm was 
that with Messrs. Little, Brown & Company, 
of Boston, then as now an eminent publishing 
house, especially of law books. The moving 
spirit at that date was Mr. James Brown, a 
warm friend of the elder John Murray, from 
whom he named a son, who has succeeded 
him in business. Mr. Brown gave the young 
printer substantial encouragement, and by his 
advice and aid Mr. Houghton, who was now 
by himself, became Mr. Brown's tenant in a 
brick, domestic-looking bmlding on the banks 
of the Charles River. The building had for- 
merly been used by the city of Cambridge as 
a house for the town poor, and stood almost 
in the open country. Mr. Brown had bought 



HENET OSCAK HOUGHTON 65 

the estate, and the building, after being re- 
modeled, was occupied by the firm of H. 0. 
Houghton & Company. Mr. Houghton and 
Mr. Brown were desirous of giving the new 
press a significant name, and tried various ex- 
periments, till Mr. Brown said one day : " This 
press stands by the side of the Charles Eiver ; 
why not call it * The Kiverside Press ' ? " and 
this most natural name was then given it, so 
that now the term Riverside has come to cover 
a thickly populated district, and to be applied 
to various neighboring industries. 

It was in 1852 that the firm of H. 0. 
Houghton & Company was established at the 
Riverside Press,^ and on September 12, 1854, 
Mr. Houghton was married to Miss Nanna 
W. Manning, who was at the time a teacher 
in the Cambridge High School. The first 
house occupied by the couple was in Ellery 
Street, but shortly after, by the aid and with 
the wise advice of Miss Mary Harris, he built 

^ An old payroll book shows for the first week, ending 
January 18, 1849, a list of sixteen names, aggregating $74. 
The increase of the business is seen by that for April 10, 
1852, when there were fifty names and a total of $575.22. 



66 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

the house on Main Street, now Massachusetts 
Avenue, still the home of the family. He 
added an apartment easy of access on the 
ground-floor for the use of his parents, who 
came to live with him. His mother died in 
1858 ; and his father afterward went to the 
home of William Houghton, the oldest of the 
sons, in Nunda, where he died. 

There was a period, therefore, of about ten 
years when Mr. Houghton may be said to 
have been establishing himself. He was mar- 
ried, had a house of his own, and saw a young 
family growing up about him. He was in full 
control of a printing-office ; for though he did 
business under the firm name of H. 0. Hough- 
ton & Company, the company was a friend 
who had embarked money in the enterprise 
and assumed no share in the management. 
He was in close relation with the Harvard 
Street Methodist Episcopal Church, where he 
was Superintendent of the Sunday-school,^ and 

^ He was Superintendent from 1850 to the end of 1853. 
For several years after that he resumed his connection with 
the church in Boston, but returned to the Harvard Street 
church in 1862, was then made a trustee, and resumed his 
office of Superintendent in 1864, retaining it till his death. 



HENKY OSCAR HOUGHTON 67 

he was taking his part in the government of 
the young city of Cambridge as a member of 
the school committee, as well afterward as a 
member of the Common Council and of the 
Board of Aldermen. 

There were two connections which he main- 
tained in business that were of great impor- 
tance to him. The firm of Little, Brown & 
Company, besides being very large law pub- 
lishers, took the lead in enterprises calling for 
a good deal of capital. They planned and 
carried out a series of dignified historical and 
poHtical works, of the kind to which we eas- 
ily give the name of monumental, like the 
writings of John Adams and John Quincy 
Adams, and the speeches of Daniel Webster. 
They undertook also that long series of Brit- 
ish Poets and British Essayists, neat, sober 
volumes in black cloth, each preceded by a 
steel-plate portrait of the author. A few of 
the volumes of the British Poets, those least 
in demand, like the poems of Bishop Heber, 
were simply small editions from English sheets 
bound uniform with the others ; most of the 
books, however, were passed under the critical 



68 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

supervision of Professor Francis J. Child, with 
occasionally the aid of Mr. C. E. Norton 
and Mr. James Eussell Lowell, and reset and 
stereotyped here. Much of this mechanical 
work feU to Mr. Houghton, and he was 
brought thus into friendly relations with the 
editors, and into very close relations with Mr. 
Brown, whom he always looked upon as the 
most far-sighted and courageous publisher 
whom he had known, — a man who saw his 
business in a large way, and yet had the 
resolution and decision to keep clear of specu- 
lative ventures. "Mr. Houghton," the elder 
man once said to him impressively, "never 
hesitate to stop any enterprise which is not 
paying : if you see a part of your business 
to be unprofitable, cut it off, no matter how 
much it hurts ; " and Mr. Houghton laid the 
advice to heart. 

The other house with which the young 
printer made an alliance was the firm of Tick- 
nor & Fields, which was rapidly acquiring a 
list of books in general literature, and mak- 
ing friends amongst English and American 
authors, especially of poetry and belles-lettres 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 69 

generally. If the volumes of the British 
Poets stood for substantial standard Uterature, 
the decorous brown-clad volumes with bhnd 
side-stamps will even now bring up delight- 
ful associations in the minds of readers who 
were young men and women in the decade of 
1850-1860. When, a few years ago, the old 
firm name of Ticknor & Company was revived 
for a short time, Mr. Howells, with the en- 
thusiasm of reminiscence, urged the new firm 
to hunt up the old-fashioned die, get some 
brown cloth made of the pattern of the old, 
and burst forth in a sort of resurrection suit, 
with the expectation of creating a genuine 
furore among book-lovers. 

As Mr. Brown in the one house had been 
the one to take the initiative, so Mr. Fields, 
with his love of literature, gave direction to 
the Hst of the other ; and, as good books de- 
mand good printing, he had very frequent 
recourse to Mr. Houghton. But the two men 
were nearer of an age than were Mr. Hough- 
ton and Mr. Brown, so that the relations were 
of a different sort ; and Mr. Houghton was so 
confident of himself in his own art that he 



70 HENEY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

took the position of an adviser in meclianical 
matters, and not always that of a mere execu- 
tive agent of the publisher. Once he invited 
Mr. Fields to look at a shelf of books in his 
counting-room. He had collected a number 
of the recent publications of Ticknor & Fields, 
and ranged them with special reference to 
showing the irrational irregularity of sizes of 
paper used in the manufacture. 

For Mr. Houghton was devoting himself 
with the greatest ardor, not simply to the 
development of his business, but to the im- 
provement of his art, and in doing this he was 
governed by a few broad, fundamental princi- 
ples. I have spoken already of the clearness 
with which he saw the correct proportions of 
a page, and how pleased he was at finding 
that what his eye saw to be correct, a canon 
of architectural proportions confirmed. By a 
similar direct judgment, he early and always 
protested against the use of sizes of paper 
except the old, accepted dimensions, and re- 
garded any departure from these as a futile 
attempt to secure individuality. He tried to 
enforce system and regularity in this respect 



HENKY OSCAR HOUGHTON 71 

into the books which he made for his custom- 
ers ; and when he had the power to order, as 
he did later in his own publishing house, the 
canon of regularity in paper was one which 
he would not have infringed. 

He carried the underlying principle of 
beauty through simplicity into his typography. 
He at once discarded the customary typo- 
graphic ornaments, though he pleased himself 
later when he was in England with having 
devices and initial letters designed expressly 
for him by a daughter of one of his printing 
friends, Mr. Whittingham. He discarded also 
the common expedients for securing variety 
by means of change in type ; his aim was, not 
to startle, not to distract, but to make his type 
so clear, simple, and orderly that it should do 
its plain work of expressing language with the 
least ostentation. In all this he was helped 
by the constant handling of the best Enghsh 
books of the day, and he studied the work 
of Aldus, Bodoni, Baskerville, Pickering, and 
other master printers ; but it is to be noted that 
he went straight to the mark from the start, and 
had apparently no false notions to get rid of. 



72 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

It is not easy for the book-lover of to-day, 
accustomed to seeing well-printed books, to 
appreciate the important contribution which 
Mr. Houghton made to the art of book-mak- 
ing in America. There were other good 
printers contemporaneous with him, such men, 
for example, as Mr. Alvord and Mr. Trow, but 
no one seems to have emphasized with such 
distinction the few but fundamental laws of 
good printing, and he had, as we have shown, 
the occasion at his hand in his close associa- 
tion with two important publishers of the best 
literature. After all, the force which lay be- 
hind this manifestation of an art was the char- 
acter of the man himself. He knew a good 
thing in printing, and he was not the man to 
give up his knowledge to the opinion of any 
one else. He was so much more positive 
than most of his customers, and he impressed 
his own convictions on them so determinedly, 
that he had his own way; his tenacity and 
his energy made him a most effective reformer 
in printing when he was engaged strictly in 
minding his own business. 

His management of the printing-office was 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 73 

marked by an unwearying attention to every 
detail, and, hard as he made his men work, he 
worked harder than any. On one occasion he 
found himself drawn into contention with his 
compositors. They made demands which he 
thought were unreasonable, and they seemed 
to have the advantage of him in the situation. 
He quietly went about amongst some teach- 
ers and other well-educated young women in 
Cambridge, persuaded them to put themselves 
under his tuition, privately trained them to 
set type, and, when the battle seemed to have 
gone against him, suddenly appeared with his 
reinforcements, estabHshed them in his com- 
posing-room, and from that day to the end 
not only had no further strike, but gave to 
the entire composing-room a character for in- 
dustry, skill, and courtesy. He was one of 
the first to demonstrate on a considerable scale 
the practicability of the employment of women 
in this capacity ; and it was characteristic of 
him that he should draw to himself the best- 
educated and best-mannered girls, and not be 
aiming for the lowest-priced. He long had a 
proof-reader. Miss Harris, on whose services 
he set a very high value. 



The reputation which Mr. Houghton made, 
not only as a printer of singularly good taste, 
but as a prompt man of business, attracted 
to him other publishers than those already 
named, and made his of&ce the favorite one 
of the small class of connoisseurs in printing 
who wished to secure a specially choice result 
in private publishing. One of the most in- 
teresting connections which Kiverside made, 
and fruitful in the end, was with Mr. 0. W. 
Wight, a scholarly gentleman, who was also 
a man of means, and adopted a mode of grati- 
fying his tastes, and at the same time making 
his money earn interest, which I have often 
wondered is not more commonly followed. 
He was a lover of Montaigne, Pascal, Madame 
de Stael, and Voltaire, and he edited, I believe 
in part translated, writings of these authors, 
and resorted to Mr. Houghton as a printer 
who could make his books as beautiful in 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 76 

page as he could desire. Mr. Houghton made 
the stereotype plates, as he might have made 
them for any author, and then Mr. Wight 
farmed them out to this or that pubhsher, 
who bore the cost of printing, binding, and 
selling, and paid Mr. Wight a royalty for the 
use of the plates. I do not attempt to name 
all the books which Mr. Wight made in this 
way, but his last, most considerable venture 
was a new edition of Dickens, which long re- 
mained as the best example of Mr. Houghton's 
art, and no one can now come upon an early 
impression of the Household Edition of Dick- 
ens, as it was called, without being dehghted 
with the classic beauty of the page. It was 
for this edition that Mr. Darley made a series 
of careful India-ink drawings, the originals of 
which have long hung on the walls of Mr. 
Houghton's house. 

In all these projects Mr. Houghton took a 
most active part, lending his judgment and 
skill in planning the mechanical treatment, 
and advising respecting the publication. He 
was studying aU the while to enlarge the 
circle of his connection with publishers, aware 



76 HENKY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

of the risk he ran if he tied himself too closely 
to any one. Moreover, his independence and 
his consciousness of mastery in his own art 
made him impatient of any relation which left 
him only the position of agent, and he found 
himself often placed, as he thought, at a disad- 
vantage. Not only did his transactions with 
Mr. Wight bring him into very close dealings 
with publishers, and familiarize him with the 
publishing side of book-making, but out of 
the difficulties which arose in these transac- 
tions there seemed but one way of wise escape, 
and that was into the assumption himself of 
the publisher's function. He needed an out- 
let for his manufacturing enterprise, and he 
felt increasingly the disadvantage of stopping 
short with the production of a book. The 
publication of the Dickens was in itself a 
serious affair in those days, for it was com- 
prised in a long series of volumes. 

It was under these circumstances, when his 
mind was gravitating toward pubHshing, that 
his business brought him into frequent inter- 
course with Mr. Melancthon M. Hurd, then 
a partner in the house of Sheldon & Com- 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 77 

pany. The business of this house was mainly 
in school books, and Mr. Hurd's taste and 
interest were in the direction of Hterature. 
The friendship of the two men, and their 
common tastes in the matter of books, easily 
led to the proposal of a partnership under 
the firm name of Hurd & Houghton.^ They 
reasoned that New York was fast becoming 
the great centre for the sale and distribution 
of books, as of other merchandise, and that 
not only was Riverside already well equipped 
for the printing of books, but that Cambridge 
must long be a natural meeting-ground for 
authors and editors. There were long con- 
ferences in those days before and after the 
inception of the new firm, and Mr. Houghton 
was full of ardor in this enlargement of scope. 
As, in the case of printing, he did not regard 
his business merely as a support and means 
of enrichment, so now his mind was given to 
a forecast of the great field which lay before 
him in the business of publishing. He meant 
emphatically to make good books, to spare no 
effort to make them pleasant to the eye and 
1 The " notice " of the partnership is dated March 1, 1864. 



78 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

the touch, — that he was sure he could do, — 
and to be sure that they were wholesome and 
worth making beautiful. The new firm meant 
to cultivate new authors, but the list of books 
with which they began, books which for the 
most part had grown out of Mr. Houghton's 
connection with Mr. Wight, — Bacon, Cooper, 
Dickens, Montaigne, Macaulay, and others, — 
naturally opened the way for that attention 
to standard Hterature which always since has 
characterized the house. A year after the firm 
was estabhshed, it was announcing a portly 
library of old divines, to be edited by the 
former University of Vermont scholar, Pro- 
fessor W. G. T. Shedd, and five volumes of 
South's sermons was the result. Mr. Hough- 
ton also, from his great familiarity with the 
making of law books and his knowledge of 
the profitable nature of the business as then 
conducted, determined to make the publica- 
tion of law books a specialty. He was more 
encouraged to this by the acquaintance he had 
formed with law writers, and by his intimate 
relations with Judge Bennett. He had, more- 
over, a natural proclivity toward the science 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 79 

of law. It appealed strongly to his robust, 
argumentative mind. 

I do not know the exact order of events, 
but very close to this important step in Mr. 
Houghton's career was the business engage- 
ment he made with the house of Messrs. G. & C. 
Merriam of Springfield, the publishers of Web- 
ster's Dictionary, who were, I think, at this 
time ready to begin the production of a new 
edition of that work. Mr. Houghton knew 
very well that, however carefully he might 
keep the firm of H. 0. Houghton & Com- 
pany, printers, distinct from that of Hurd & 
Houghton, publishers, he was running the risk 
of losing engagements with other pubHshers 
by entering their domain himself ; and he was 
too far-sighted to think that he could at once 
build up a publishing house which would 
exhaust the capacity of his printing establish- 
ment, so that he looked upon this alliance with 
G. & C. Merriam not only as good in itself, 
but as giving great stabiHty to his manufac- 
turing enterprise. He was aware of the fluc- 
tuations which attended the fortunes of mis- 
cellaneous publishing, and of the speculative 



80 HENEY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

element whicli inevitably attached to this busi- 
ness, and he valued highly this very important 
connection. The men on both sides were ad- 
mirably joined. They were upright, honor- 
able men, and they were also exceedingly able 
business men, unflagging in their attention to 
details, fair in dealing, but as keen in their 
bargains as they were faithful to their engage- 
ments. A life-long friendship grew up among 
them, which found many opportunities of ex- 
pression outside of immediate business engage- 
ments. Several years later Mr. 0. M. Baker 
became connected with the Springfield house, 
and much of the detail fell upon him. At 
the time of Mr. Houghton's death he wrote 
these words, which bear witness to the strong 
human relations which sometimes are formed 
within the shell of business : — 

"During the whole eighteen years of my 
acquaintance with Mr. Houghton he has al- 
ways impressed me as being my friend, even 
in the discussion of vexed questions where 
our interests were quite at variance, and I 
never had an interview with him that did not 
leave me with a feeling of the most profound 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 81 

respect for his manliness. It has been a 
source of much pleasure and satisfaction to 
me that I have seemed to merit his confidence 
and friendship ; but I could be as nothing to 
him in comparison with what he has always 
been to me, and there is no one left, outside 
of the members of our firm, that I can go to 
with the same famiharity and confidence that 
I have so many times gone to him." 

The formation of the new firm, and the 
demands created by the large contract with 
the Messrs. Merriam, called for an increase of 
facihties at Kiverside, especially in the matter 
of a bindery, and in the spring of 1864: Mr. 
Houghton made his first journey to Europe. 
His errand chiefly was to secure master bind- 
ers, and to open the way for securing the best 
material both in binding and in types. Neces- 
sarily he made himself acquainted at once 
with the wages paid to workmen in his own 
craft, and, since he was not only a practical 
printer but a man of education, he took a very 
strong interest in the economic and poHtical 
questions which a comparison of the condi- 
tions in England and in the United States 



82 HENRY OSCAK HOUGHTON 

suggested to him. He had, as a Henry Clay 
Whig, accepted the doctrine of protection 
when he was a student in college, and had 
never seen any reason to change his mind. 
His experience in London did much to con- 
firm him in this economic belief, and he used 
often to speak of the profound impression 
made upon him by the evidence which he 
saw of the almost hopeless prospect of the 
English workman as compared vidth that of 
his American f eUow. A few years later, when 
the question of Protection vs. Free Trade was 
stoutly debated by Hon. W. D. Kelley, the 
veteran champion of protection in Congress, 
one of the workmen whom Mr. Houghton 
secured at this time wrote the following letter 
to Mr. Kelley : — 

Caiubridge, Mass., May 10, 1872. 

Hon. "W. D. Kelley, — 

Dear Sir, — A fellow-workman having lent 
me a pamphlet containing a speech deliv- 
ered by you, March 16, 1872, against free 
trade, I take the Hberty of addressing you, as 
I am interested in that subject. Sir, let us 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 83 

look at the blessings of free trade where it 
works so well. I cannot do better than take 
my own case. When in England I always 
had a great desire to come to this country, 
not that I expected to get rich, but wanted 
to be able to save something for my mainte- 
nance in my old age. In 1857 we began to 
save. In 1864 Mr. H. 0. Houghton was in 
England, trying to engage some compositors, 
printers, and book-binders. I am a book- 
binder, and applied to him to see if he would 
pay our passage, — myself, wife, and two 
children. He came to Derby and I told 
him what I could do. He agreed to advance 
our passage money. We had been saving 
nearly seven years ; had twenty-four shilhngs 
per week, which was the best wages given. I 
had saved only .£12 10s. 

What is the difference between my life 
there and that which I enjoy here? Mr. 
Houghton lent me money to buy furniture, 
and with the passage money I was in debt for 
$270. I received $15 per week first; have 
been advanced several times ; now I have $22 
per week. I paid the debt, have my life in- 



84 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

sured and $615 in the bank. This has been 
done in less than eight years. You men- 
tion Hon. H. 0. Houghton speaking of the 
compositors of England not being able to pay 
their passage ; there were about twenty in the 
same shop with me, and not one married man 
better off than myself. . . . 

Respectfully yours, 

James Wilson. 

The new firm of Hurd & Houghton be- 
gan at once to use the term " Riverside " in 
characterizing a series of books they pro- 
jected, the Riverside Classics, and the custom 
grew of gi'V'ing the title to editions in which 
special care had been taken to secure beauty 
and dignity of form, but always with a re- 
serve in its use. Mr. Houghton, with the 
traditions of older printers before him, ob- 
tained from Miss Whittingham, in London, 
a monoo:ram in which the two H's of the 
firm name were linked together, and used it 
on the title-pages of books. He had found 
a crest of the Houghton family, but he did 
not like the motto, which was somewhat tru- 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 85 

culent, and supplanted it with another, Tout 
Men ou rien, and used this phrase on his book 
plate, with satisfaction in its concise statement 
of his business creed; it was not till about 
1880 that the motto began to be used deHb- 
erately by the publishing firm. 



VI 

My own acquaintance with Mr. Houghton 
— though I had seen him once, a few years 
before, when I consulted him about the 
printing of a college magazine, of which I 
was an editor — began in the year 1864, 
upon occasion of the printing of a life of 
an older brother, which I had written. It 
chanced that the plates of the book were 
made just before Mr. Houghton made his 
connection with Mr. Hurd, and, as I intended 
publishing the book at my own risk, I placed 
it naturally with the new firm. I had pre- 
viously appeared as the author of two books 
for the young, and was intending to occupy 
myself with Hterature. The acquaintance, 
begun during the composition of the memoir 
of my brother, which took me frequently to 
Riverside, quickly ripened into friendship ; 
and when the new firm of Hurd & Houghton 
was estabhshed I was asked to be the reader 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 87 

of the manuscripts submitted for publication, 
and the critic of such English books as they 
might arrange to republish. As my home 
was in Boston, I was more frequently in Mr. 
Houghton's company than in Mr. Hurd's, 
though my reports were sent to the New 
York of&ce. To be in with the formation 
of a new pubhshing house, when it already 
enjoyed the prestige of the foremost printing 
house in the country, as regards mechanical 
work, offered a pleasurable excitement to a 
young litterateur, and I took frequent occa- 
sion to walk out to Cambridge at the end of 
the day and visit the Press. Mr. Houghton 
then, as long afterward, found his greatest 
recreation in riding or driving, and it was 
not long before we fell into the habit of tak- 
ing long drives together in the late afternoon, 
supplemented by a weekly dinner with the 
young family on Saturday. As my connec- 
tion with the house became more intimate, 
the intercourse with the head of the house 
increased. Sometimes we rode together, 
sometimes we drove ; and, as years went on, 
the son, who has now succeeded his father, 



88 HENRY OSCAK HOUGHTON 

was stowed away in a little seat in the buggy, 
until one day his father suddenly woke to 
the fact that the boy was growing up, and 
stopped our conversation to enjoin upon him 
the necessity of not repeating anything he 
heard us saying. The rides and drives after 
a while diminished, as Mr. Houghton's own 
family came to be his friendly companions 
and I had my separate family interests ; but 
the peregrinatory conferences were resumed 
in recent years, when we were both living 
in Cambridge and having the same of&ce 
hours in Boston. We looked forward to the 
spring, and to the fall after the summer diver- 
sions, when we could again walk out over the 
West Boston Bridge ; and when the Harvard 
Bridge was built we found a new deHght in 
the sunsets, which interrupted our talk as the 
western sky was brilliant above the noble 
sweep of the Charles River. Mr. Houghton, 
at the beginning of our connection, was fif- 
teen years my senior, but the thirty years 
which slipped away found this breach clos- 
ing, for we had estabhshed so many common 
causes that he came to ignore the difference 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 89 

in age more even than I : that is one of the 
privileges of the senior in such associations. 

One of the first subjects which we dis- 
cussed was the natural one of an organ of the 
new publishing house. The fact that such 
sKght experience as I had enjoyed in litera- 
ture was mainly in the direction of writing 
for the young had something to do, no doubt, 
with his resolution to undertake a magazine 
for young people, but he was incited to it 
also by the opportunity which it afforded the 
Press. He was ambitious of doing superfine 
work. It was an era when book illustration 
was making very rapid advances. The Uni- 
versity Press had achieved some notable suc- 
cesses, and Ticknor & Fields, then the most 
prominent publishing house in Boston, had 
made a mark with Our Young Folks, an 
illustrated magazine. Mr. Houghton thought 
he saw in the publication of a similar maga- 
zine an opportunity to show what he could do 
in good printing, and he was besides genu- 
inely interested in the organization of sound 
literature for the young. He saw how largely 
English juvenile books filled the bookstores, 



90 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

and he had a hearty and honest ambition to 
supersede them with hooks instinct with 
American Hfe. He may have overstated the 
case, for he was impatient of nice distinctions 
when he had a point Hke this to make, but 
he was sincere in his adherence to protective 
principles, not only on the ground of self- 
interest, but on the more substantial moral 
ground of securing the greatest possible inde- 
pendence for America, and of fortifying the 
social institutions of the country. He used 
to repeat with great earnestness a criticism 
which Agassiz once made to him of a chil- 
dren's book in some department of natural 
history, in which every illustration was drawn 
from some object not native to America, and 
he denounced the ordinary English juvenile 
books as assuming the unalterable relation of 
classes as they exist in England. Such books, 
he declared, were unwholesome reading for 
American children; and he was for driving 
them out, partly by a tariff which discrimi- 
nated against them, and partly by the produc- 
tion of native books which should supplant 
them as objects of merchandise. 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 91 

A magazine seemed to offer the most fa- 
miliar mode of exploiting juvenile literature, 
and so he planned a monthly which should 
be generous in proportions and wholesome in 
its character. There was much discussion 
over the name to he given it, and, after many 
proposals had been made and rejected, we 
feU back on the most obvious one of Tlie 
Rwerside Magazine for Young People. I 
say most obvious, and yet the term had not 
then been applied much further than to the 
Press itself, except in the case already men- 
tioned of the Riverside Classics; but Mr. 
Houghton had at once a pride in the name, 
and a jealous regard for its fame. He had, 
when the magazine was started, a little shyness 
about its use ; but he had already perceived its 
value as a trade-mark, and he found it a grate- 
ful substitute for the use of his own name, 
which he did not care to see used superfluously 
in the conduct of business. Indeed, the im- 
personal character of the word " Riverside " 
was its great value in his eyes. It stood for 
something objective, gathering his ideals, his 
aims, his honorable ambition, so that he could 



92 HENRY OSCAE HOUGHTON 

enjoy and glory in it without any shame- 
facedness. " Riverside," lie once said to me, 
** is like a diamond wluch I can hold up be- 
fore my eye, and turn it this way and that, 
and let the hght fall on it, and see it sparkle." 
In this saying he unconsciously disclosed the 
secret of his power. He grew prosperous in 
the conduct of his business, but the prosperity 
feU to him because he was seeking something 
higher. He was building an institution ; he 
was creating something which should have an 
organic life of its own, and the whole stream 
of his energy passed into this external crea- 
tion. He projected himself into it, and never 
withdrew his hand, but he thought of it as an 
artist thinks of the picture he paints, the poet 
of the poem he writes. 

As I have intimated, the secret of Mr. 
Houghton's power in business lay in the re- 
lation which he bore to his work : he was not 
thinking of himself and his own aggrandize- 
ment, — he was thinking of the institution he 
was creating, and by a paradox, though he 
threw himself heart and soul into the en- 
terprise, he effaced himself to a remarkable 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 93 

degree. It was impossible that so positive, so 
vigorous a personality should not be conspicu- 
ous in the business, and yet he shaped his 
industry with distinct reference to the growth 
of an organism. He was by nature and tem- 
perament a leader, and was impatient of any- 
thing like divided authority, but he was 
equally aware of the need of an order with 
clearly defined responsibiHty. In arranging 
his business, therefore, even when it was small 
and he carried aU the details in his head, he 
insisted upon such a system of reports as 
should almost imitate the methods of an army. 
" If I tell a boy to hang up my overcoat, I 
expect him to come back and tell me he has 
done it," he would say, and his memory for 
details was extraordinary. An error, espe- 
cially one arising from carelessness, committed 
by one of his young men, might have been 
forgotten in the course of time by the one 
who committed it, but Mr. Houghton never 
forgot it, and never allowed the young man 
to forget it. Abstractly considered, there was 
something comically terrible in this supervis- 
ing memory, but in reality many a one, though 



94 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

withdrawing as far as he could into some 
recess of exculpatory consciousness when he 
saw the f amiHar reminiscence making for him, 
was rendered distinctly less capable of repeat- 
ing his blunder, or making another like it. 

As the range of the business increased, 
Mr. Houghton continued the system by which 
every operation came regularly under his eye. 
At first not a letter was written or a bill made 
out that did not pass before him for inspec- 
tion before it was sent out, and when this 
minuteness of oversight became physically 
impossible, he continued to have a daily re- 
port of the correspondence made to him with 
a memorandum of the contents and the names 
of the persons to whom the several letters 
were assigned, and it was a familiar sight to 
see him going from desk to desk with a strip 
of yellow paper containing these memoranda, 
and acquainting hhnself with the condition of 
affairs. In the complexity of a great printing 
and pubHshiug house there are midtitudinous 
details, and the chance of error in some par- 
ticular which shall confuse the result is very 
great. It was partly the necessity of meet- 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 95 

ing this condition, partly a native passion for 
thoroughness, which made Mr. Houghton ex- 
traordinarily alert and vigilant. " Follow it 
up" was his watchword, and his persistence 
in getting to the hottom of every difficulty, 
in fixing the responsihility of a mistake, was 
unflagging, his memory for derelictions most 
tenacious. The vigor of this discipline was 
very great and many chafed under it, but it 
was never relaxed, and no one was more com- 
pletely subject to it than Mr. Houghton him- 
self. It led him to the printing-office often 
early in the morning, before his men had 
arrived, and late in the evening again, to see 
that all was safe for the nio^lit. If he made 
rules, he was strenuous in enforcing them on 
himself, but he did not make many rules ; 
he was not a martinet in discipline : he de- 
manded obedience to the great laws of order, 
accuracy, thoroughness in all that was under- 
taken, and he aimed at simplicity rather than 
complexity of method. 

Indeed, he was sometimes a little impatient 
of method, he believed so much more in the 
man behind the method. The most perfect 



9G HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

inothod ho knew would never execute itself ; 
nnd when an elaborate plan was outlined, he 
spout lltilo criticism on the plan, but wished 
to know at ouco who was to carry it out. 
Ilonco his attack, for I'ailuro in any enterprise, 
was directed upon the person who had failed, 
and few there were who escaped being- hauled 
over the coals, as the expressive phrase is. 
The coals were rarely allowed to burn into 
dead ashes ; they wore i'od by many occasions, 
and tlio hauling- was porfornuHl with an energy 
which kept the hand well in practice. Mr. 
Houghton sometimes lost his temper in this 
exercise, but usually ho drew back from the 
edge, and the person who was a disinterested 
bystander could often extract a vast deal of 
entertainmont out ot* the racy speech which 
enlivonod the reproof. Mr. llougliton's good 
sense of humor was his safeguard at such times, 
and his felicitous comparisons, his shrewd epi- 
thets, his renu^te anecdotes, all tempered the 
severity of his judgments. He showed, more- 
over, not infreipiently, a singidar faculty for 
conveying his meaning by the most casual 
and indirect speech, which was curiously incon- 



HENRY OSCAR IIOUaHTON 97 

sistent with tlio vlj;<)r of ]\'\h tliioct aitacli. 1 
ronuMulxu- ono ol' \m iiHMoc'uiicH (MMnlii*;- out of 
luH room oiK^ day niul Haying" : '' Wi^Il, I liavo 
1)0011 ta,llvlM<!: wldi Mr. Iloiii'liloii for lialf an 
hour, and I hiiow just wliat \u) thlnlvs, hut 
1 '11 h(^ Messed if ho liaH Hald a word wlilch 
could ho takon as an oxplicit oxpioHsion of 
hit) opinion." 

It \h a proper (>onii)u«nt on thin HtatonuMit 
of Mr. ilouiihtim's nianiuM* toward Iiih aHsoci- 
atos and oinploy<M'H that ho Ii(^|)t hy him yi^ar 
aftor yoar tho saiiu^ per.son.s, IMioy wor(i ofton 
Boroly voxod, — no ohaHtiHoniont for tlu^ proM- 
oiit Hoomcth joyouH, hut ratlior j»riovouH, — 
yot it wan raro that on<» of tlu^m delilxiratoly 
Avithdrow from his jxwt. Tlioro vvorci two or 
ihrcu^ roasons for this : tho porson at fault folt 
tho jiisti('(5 of n^proof ; tlu^'o was a [jositivo 
CHjmt de corps ; disoipliixs howovor sovoro, 
IB apt to havo soiix^thin<i^ (»f a tonic, virtuo 
in it; hut ahovo all, I thiidi tlxMo was a jjj'on- 
uino rocM)Mniti()ii of tho inlx^rcud, justico and 
jj^oimrosity of Mr. IIou<i^hton'H naturo, and an 
aKSuraiico that thoro was nothing [xx'H<»naJ 
in tho rotrihutiou which ho vitjitod upon tho 



98 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

delinquent. Mr. Houghton used to say, ecOr- 
nestly, that he never discharged a clerk and 
never would. I used to think, sometimes, 
that there was not much to choose between an 
abrupt dismissal and a slow freezing out ; but 
there was this marked difference, that the 
ordeal to which one was subjected might, and 
sometimes did, residt in a distinct indin-ation 
of the temper, so that a very effective work- 
man was the result, and every one felt con- 
fidence that he would not be the victim of 
arbitrary action, or suffer permanently from 
an impulse of his employer. 

It was a characteristic saying of Mr. Hough- 
ton that when the Press was crowded with 
work, he busied himself most with seeking 
new work. He was foreai'med against the 
dano-er of over-confidence, and he knew that 
every harvest meant a time of sowing long 
before. But he was, above all, unceasingly 
mindful of the need of keeping the Press 
occupied. As a man of busmess, he knew 
the importance of making his machinery earn 
money uninterruptedly ; as a captain of indus- 
try, he never forgot the company he had mus- 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 99 

tered ; that work should bo slack was a mis- 
fortuiio, but that thereby men should be 
thrown out of employuient was a disaster, and 
he strained every nerve m dull times to ihid 
work with which to keep his men along, even 
thou«^h he had to take It at prices which 
yielded him little or no profit. 

This solidarity of the Press, so that Mr. 
Ilouo'liton lived to see the o;randchIldren of 
some of his first workmen employed side by 
side with their grandparents, was further 
illustrated by one or two measures which ho 
took for confirming the close relation he held 
with his workmen. He pondered long the ex- 
pediency of making his growing business one 
of co(')peratIon formally, and went so far at 
one time as to have papers drawn up for in- 
corporation, providing for a pecuniary Interest 
of all engaged in the business. But he was 
not a theorist : he was a business man with an 
idealistic tendency, and he had a stable mind 
which guarded him against a too experimen- 
tal habit. Moreover, he could not help seeing 
that his own temperament would make it dif- 
ficult for him to enter uito engagements which 



100 HENEY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

might abridge his instinctive governing power ; 
and finally, when the matter assumed a tenta- 
tive shape, he did what a wise man will under 
such circumstances, — he heeded the voice of 
his wife, who threw the whole weight of her 
judgment in the opposite scale. But, though 
he did not change a partnership into a cor- 
poration, he could not rest content until he 
had devised some means by which he could 
bring every one in the Press into possible in- 
terest in the business, and the shape which his 
plan took was that of a savings department, 
by the terms of which any person employed 
could deposit savings and receive a good rate 
of interest, and, upon every even hundred dol- 
lars deposited, there might be at the end of 
the year a dividend if the business prospered, 
but a limit was set to the amount of this divi- 
dend. It was not cooperation in the technical 
sense of the term ; it was not profit-sharing as 
a basis of business management ; but it was an 
experiment in the direction of a closer interde- 
pendence of employer and employed, a rough- 
and-ready device for getting over some of 
the disadvantages of the wage-system without 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 101 

loosening the control of the business by those 
who organized it, and had to bear the re- 
sponsibility of successful conduct and the risk 
of adversity. 

One of the few men now employed at River- 
side, of the group that came over in 1864, is 
Mr. James Wilson, of the bindery, whose let- 
ter to Mr. Kelley has already been printed. 
I have asked him to jot down some of his 
recollections and impressions, and he writes 
in part as follows : — 

" One of the things I noticed about Mr. 
Houghton was his attention to business: he 
was at the place early in the morning very 
often before we were, and often after we left 
at night. One Saturday night I was gilding 
some books that were wanted ; it was eleven 
o'clock, and I was alone. He came into the 
old back room and said : * Well, Mr. Wilson, 
I am sorry to see you at work, as I do like a 
man to have his Saturday night to himself.' 
I was the more struck with it because he had 
been working in the counting-room himself 
alone, and only seemed to think of me. 

"There was one trait in Mr. Houghton's 



102 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

character which will always stand out in the 
memory of his early employees ; that is the 
way he had of going to the men while they 
were at work, and saying a few encouraging 
words to each one. This caused a mutual 
feeling of goodwill to exist between the em- 
ployer and employees, so that all felt a per- 
sonal interest in the welfare of the place. 
This acknowledgment of the employees was 
not confined to the Riverside Press, but he 
would always have a kind word wherever he 
met you. 

" There was another good trait about Mr. 
Houghton : if any of the workpeople were 
away sick, he would soon miss them, and he 
would make it his business to inquire about 
them, and frequently go to see them. By 
such acts as these he wound himself into the 
hearts of the workpeople in a way that few 
men have the power of doing." 

Mr. Wilson speaks also, in his notes, of a 
scheme which Mr. Houghton had at one time 
of building houses in the immediate vicinity 
of the Press for the use of the workpeople. 
He carried out his design to a sHght extent 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 103 

by taking occasion, when enlarging the build- 
ing, to remove some wooden houses which 
stood in the way, making a court, to which he 
gave the name of Daye Court, from the first 
printer in Cambridge; but he never carried 
the design very far, partly, I think, because 
he required at that time all his capital for his 
business, partly because he had strong convic- 
tions of the unwisdom of segregating the 
people. He visited with interest such estab- 
lishments as that of Mame at Tours, and 
spoke appreciatively of the villages which had 
grown up about great printing-offices; but 
he was emphatic in beHef that in our Ameri- 
can Hfe every family should have its own vol- 
untary place in the general community, and 
take part in church, school, and politics quite 
independently of industrial relations. 

For one illustration of Mr. Houghton's in- 
terest in workingmen in connection with social 
order I am indebted to Hon. Carroll D. Wright. 
The time referred to was long subsequent to 
that of which I have been writing, but the 
incident has its value in this place. " About 
1882," says Colonel Wright, "Mr. Houghton 



104 HENKY OSCAK HOUGHTON 

submitted to me a proposition which I have 
always felt more clearly disclosed the breadth 
of the man's mind than would his regular 
business operations. He informed me that he 
had for some years had in mind the advisa- 
bihty of publishing a periodical weekly for the 
benefit of wage-earners. He wished to have 
the periodical first-class in every respect, — as 
well gotten up, as thoroughly arranged, and 
as well printed, as the best illustrated papers. 
He wished it to be of the size of Harper's 
Weekly y and to contain interesting matter for 
the employees of New England especially, — 
aU industrial facts, put in an attractive way ; 
the treatment of current questions on a broad 
and non-partisan basis ; the discussion of ques- 
tions that would interest organized and un- 
organized labor ; information as to inventions, 
— everything, in fact, that could interest and 
enlighten the men and women who are em- 
ployed in great manufacturing works. He 
wished to have the journal illustrated in the 
best way. His idea was to furnish persons, 
at their address, by mail, copies of the pub- 
lication, first asking the proprietors of works 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 105 

to submit a reasonable list of persons to whom 
it should be sent free for a while, or on sub- 
scription lists furnished by employers, who 
would be asked in the first instance to pay 
the subscription for the sake of distributing 
healthy labor literature among their people. 
Mr. Houghton confidently expected that the 
quaHty of the pubHcation would soon result in 
actual cash subscriptions to a sufficient extent 
to pay all expenses. He knew, of course, that 
such an undertaking would involve a large 
expenditure of money, and that it would be 
some time — two or three years perhaps — be- 
fore any return could be expected in the way 
of income for expenses. It was not in his plan 
to make any money out of the enterprise, but 
simply to estabhsh a high-toned journal work- 
ing in industrial interests. To accomplish his 
purpose he proposed to raise a guaranty of 
$100,000, the parties subscribing to the fund 
pledging themselves to pay in at times such 
sums as might be necessary for the support 
of the scheme, and until it was on a paying 
basis, that is, paying expenses ; and in this, 
after his own pledge of $10,000, he secured 



106 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

other pledges, so that the total amounted to 
$30,000. But Mr. Houghton was too good a 
business man to enter practically upon his 
plan until the whole $100,000, which he 
deemed to be necessary, should be pledged. 
It was impossible to secure more than the 
$30,000. 

" Mr. Houghton very kindly proposed that 
I take the editorial and business management 
of the periodical, — a proposition which at 
once enlisted not only my sympathy, but my 
cordial cooperation. I should have been glad 
to join in any such plan, for I believe that, 
if it could have been carried out, very great 
good could have been done to all involved, 
both employer and employee. 

" In considering the plan which I have out- 
lined, I was, of course, thrown very much with 
Mr. Houghton, and I was greatly gratified to 
see how thoroughly interested he was in the 
elevation of those who work for wages. He 
had the right idea, that is, that the truest ele- 
vation can come only from a broad enlighten- 
ment, — fi'om instruction, from knowledge of 
conditions; for it was in the plan to bring 



HENRY OSCAK HOUGHTON 107 

out not only conditions as they exist, but in 
comparison with other times and countries, — 
everything, in fact, that would give the work- 
ingman a true picture of industrial conditions 
and the conditions of production. I believe 
now that, could a sufficient number of em- 
ployers be induced to become interested in 
such a plan as that suggested by Mr. Hough- 
ton, more practical good could be done than 
in any other way. Of course, the publication 
of official documents furnishes a certain kind 
of information, but not in the way to attract 
men who are not students of economic condi- 
tions. A popular, high-toned, illustrated labor 
paper, with capital enough behind it to assure 
its success regardless of the subscription list, 
would be an undertaking of the greatest value 
and importance. Mr. Houghton was far ahead 
of his time." 

Mr. Wright's letter illustrates the imagina- 
tive side of Mr. Houghton's nature. He liked 
to project a scheme of this kind, connected 
with his business, but reaching much beyond 
the scope of a merely conunercial enterprise, 
and the process of persuading himself of its 



108 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

practicability was often accompanied by the 
exercise of his persuasive power on others. 
He was given to thinking aloud, as he would 
say, and his active mind grasped certain desir- 
able results, and then busied itself in work- 
ing out the means to reach the end. Thus at 
another time he imagined a great clearing- 
house for publishers which should be under 
their own management and bring certain im- 
portant functions of distribution into the con- 
trol of the houses engaged in it, thus minim- 
izing the employment of jobbers. Again, he 
pondered long the intricate questions involved 
in trade discounts and net prices. He was not 
one to allow his theories too far to govern 
his business action ; he drew back often when 
the time came for putting his theories to an 
explicit test. But when he was committed to 
any plan, especially if it was one he had care- 
fully worked out, he had a tremendous resolu- 
tion in carrying it into execution, and in those 
cases he inspired others with great confidence 
in him. Much of his remarkable success was 
due to a faith in himself, which confirmed the 
faith of others. 



vn 

This is a sketch of Mr. Houghton, and not 
of the house of which he was so Ions: the 
head ; but in order to give the reader a con- 
venient chronological survey of the develop- 
ment of the business, I will set down in a 
paragraph the successive changes in the style 
and personal constituency. 

The firm of Hurd & Houghton existed 
under the same name until 1878, but from 
time to time changes occurred in its person- 
nel. In 1866 Mr. Houghton's brother, Mr. 
Albert G. Houghton, who had formerly been 
a merchant in Alabama, was admitted, occu- 
pying himself mainly with the interests in 
New York. Not long after the estabhshment 
of the Riverside Magazine, Mr. George H. 
Mifflin, a recent graduate of Harvard College, 
came into the service of the house. In 1872 
both he and I became members of the firm. 
I retired after three years, preferring to give 



110 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

my time more exclusively to literary pursuits, 
but have ever since been identified with the 
editorial department of the business. Mr. 
Mifflin is just completing a quarter century 
of membership, and is the head of the house. 
Failing health led to the retirement of Mr. 
Albert G. Houghton in 1878 from active en- 
gagement ; and Mr. Hurd, who for a similar 
cause had previously withdrawn from close 
attention to details of business, also retired. 
At the same time the house formed a com- 
bination with James R. Osgood & Company, 
the successors to Ticknor & Fields and Fields, 
Osgood & Company. Mr. Osgood represented 
this house in the new firm, and the style be- 
came Houghton, Osgood & Company. This 
consoKdation greatly increased the list of pub- 
lications of the house through the accession 
of the names of the great leaders of American 
literature. The premises in Boston formerly 
occupied by James R. Osgood & Company 
became the headquarters of the pubHshing 
department, and the books now bore the im- 
print of Boston and New York instead of 
New York and Cambridge. The firm as thus 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 111 

constituted continued for two years, when Mr. 
Osgood retired, and the style of the firm 
became, in 1880, Houghton, Mifflin & Com- 
pany ; and, shortly after, the publishing head- 
quarters in Boston were removed to 4 Park 
Street, and in New York to 11 East Seven- 
teenth Street. Mr. Lawson Valentine became 
a partner, and continued thus till his death in 
1889. In 1884 Mr. James D. Hurd, a son of 
Mr. Houghton's former partner, was admitted 
to the firm, but he died in December, 1887. 
On the 1st of April, 1888, three new partners 
were admitted, — Mr. James Murray Kay, 
who was born in Glasgow, Scotland, but sub- 
sequently had large business interests in New 
Brunswick ; Mr. Thurlow Weed Barnes ; and 
Mr. Henry 0. Houghton, Jr. Since that date, 
Mr. Barnes has left the business, and Mr. 
Oscar R. Houghton and Mr. Albert F. Hough- 
ton, sons of the late Albert G. Houghton, have 
been admitted to the firm, and have their resi- 
dence in New York. 

In all these various changes Mr. Houghton 
was the controlling force. After the business 
was concentrated in Cambridge and Boston, 



112 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

he gave up with great reluctance the special 
oversight of the Press and made his head- 
quarters in Boston. For a long time, how- 
ever, he made it his practice to visit the P;-ess 
daily, and it was there that his real affection 
in his work lay. I was walking home with 
him one day, the spring before his fatal ill- 
ness, when he was contemplating his address 
on Early Printing in America, and he fell 
on some reminiscence of his own occupation. 
He half whimsically and yet with real seri- 
ousness was disposed to regret that he had 
allowed himself to be drawn from the simpli- 
city of a printer's business into the complexity 
of pubHshing. He sketched his career as it 
might have been, — the perfection of all the 
processes of making books; the enlargement 
of his premises to meet the demands of his 
business, and yet the centralization of the 
business and its restriction to one great func- 
tion. It was in a way the passing mood of 
a somewhat tired man; but I reaHzed how 
strong was his passion for his early vocation, 
and also how his mind fastened on a large, 
concrete expression of his ideals. He used 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 113 

in the vigor of his days to speculate on an 
old age spent in the country with a toy print- 
ing-office to play with. He never relinquished 
a close scrutiny of the style of his books ; he 
labored with type founders and paper makers 
to secure the results he wanted, and one of 
his most satisfactory achievements was a par- 
ticular font of type, which goes in the Press 
by the matter of fact name of Number Thir- 
teen, but is coming to be recognized as the 
" Houghton " type.^ 

Nevertheless, it is not likely that he would, 
if hard pressed, have refused to admit that, in 
giving his mind more exclusively to pubHsh- 
ing, he was following a course clearly marked 
out for him in the expansion of his energies ; 
and, as the pubHshing side of his business 
came to absorb more and more the product of 
the Press, he identified the two interests and 
treated them as a whole. It had always been 
a marked element in the success of the Press 
that books there were treated, not piecemeal, 
but with careful study of the interrelation of 
the several parts; and it was only a more 

^ This book is printed from Number Thirteen. 



114 HENRY OSCAE HOUGHTON 

comprehensive application of the same prin- 
ciple when he perfected the organism of a 
manufacturing pubHshing house. 

He often expressed the opinion that the 
function which discriminated the pubhsher 
from the manufacturer and the seller of 
books was that of making books known, and, 
as he found it necessary to concentrate his 
attention upon the general conduct of the 
business, and to give over the details of man- 
ufacturing to others, he made much of what 
may comprehensively be termed " advertis- 
ing." The details of this he intrusted to 
others, and indeed the system followed was 
scarcely in any sense his scheme ; but certain 
general principles he insisted on with great 
earnestness, and, in two or three instances, 
worked out plans which illustrated his con- 
ception of the most effective advertising. 
Newspaper advertising he termed dress pa- 
rade, and he did not greatly rely on it, for 
he thought the real work was done when 
knowledge of a book was brought imme- 
diately to the attention of the person who 
might naturally be interested in this particu- 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 115 

lar book; and he was constantly pressing, 
therefore, the intelligent collection of lists of 
names of probable book-buyers, to be classified 
for use in the forwarding of special circulars 
and bulletins. He devised, also, the system 
by which an author should be advertised, 
especially when a new book was to appear, 
by means of a circular containing a woodcut 
portrait, and a well-arranged statement of the 
author's writings. Out of this grew the Por- 
trait Catalogue, which received the flattery of 
imitation in different quarters. He beheved, 
also, in phalanxes of books, and, recognizing 
the great accumulation of titles in the firm's 
catalogue, he planned a series of special cata- 
logues by subjects, which developed finally 
into a carefully classified list of publications, 
perhaps the latest important piece of work 
organized by him in his business. 

It is a further demonstration of this atti- 
tude toward his work, what may be called the 
egotistic as contrasted with the selfish, that 
he was singularly indifferent to the element 
of competition. He had of course, in his 
business enterprises, to measure strength with 



116 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

his neighbors, but he was not greatly in- 
fluenced by what they did. For example, he 
did not study closely the work of rival presses, 
nor scrutinize the lists of other publishers, 
and, above all, he had a very lofty sense of 
comity between publishers. He never would 
sohcit an author who had formed connections 
with another house. "If he chooses to ap- 
proach us," he would say, " well and good. 
We are at Hberty then to treat with him. 
But we will not stir a finger to get him away 
from the publisher who already issues his 
books." And he carried this scrupulosity to 
its utmost limits, though he was aware that 
efforts were constantly made to draw away 
from him the writers whose reputation he 
had stimulated. He carried his favorite ad- 
vice to authors, to keep their books together, 
so far that more than once he discouraged 
a writer who was dissatisfied with existing 
arrangements from coming to him. He was 
wont to use a pretty strong term, " loyalty," 
of those who held by him in spite of temp- 
tations to go after other publishers ; but he 
recognized quite as strongly the reciprocal 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 117 

relations involved, and, once an author was 
" on the list," he would strain a point before 
he would suffer a new book from the same 
hand to go elsewhere, even though it might 
fall below the standard previously set. And 
here I venture the assertion that in nothing 
did Mr. Houghton show more sincerely the 
friendly interest he took in the authors who 
intrusted their books to him than in the pa- 
tience and candor he showed while the books 
were yet in manuscript. He knew well the 
business principle involved in the requirement 
that the manuscript should be ready for the 
printer, and that it was no function of a pub- 
lishing house to edit for authors the books 
it issued ; but in many an instance, when the 
manuscript offered was not thoroughly accept- 
able, he would deal with it as a possible book, 
and, by advice, encouragement, and criticism, 
get the work finally into proper shape. It 
was this temper, over and beyond the com- 
mercial spirit, which made him a representa- 
tive of the best class of pubhshers. He was 
not in the technical sense a literary critic, and 
he was perhaps disposed to underestimate the 



118 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

art of literature, but he had a strong sense 
of what was enduring, and a very direct way 
of appraising books. Especially, whatever 
appealed to the broad, common interest of 
men, and was helpful in its character, com- 
mended itself to his judgment. 

It was in keeping with the largeness of his 
ideals in business and his far-sightedness that 
he did not require the demonstration of imme- 
diate success. If an enterprise commended 
itself to him as sound, he was wiUing to wait 
for returns. There was, indeed, something 
very attractive to him in projects which were 
based on broad, fundamental principles, and 
would take time for their execution, and these 
projects were all the more acceptable if they 
took the shape of modest beginnings. He 
felt his way with experiments, but he was con- 
stantly seeing the probable development. He 
had the courage which comes from a large 
• business imagination. At the same time no 
one could be more resolute in a demand for 
the cold facts in the history of undertakings. 
He perfected a system of records by which 
lie could ascertain the exact history of every 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 119 

one of his ventures, and carried about in his 
pocket for frequent reference what he called 
his Bankrupt List — a merciless showing of 
the books that were not paying. Great was 
the satisfaction when one book or another 
would slowly emerge from the list and take 
its place among those which had paid for 
themselves. 

Perhaps the most significant illustration of 
Mr. Houghton's treatment of his business as 
an institution is to be found in a step which 
he took not long after the formation of the 
firm of Houghton, Mifflin & Company. He 
established a weekly council, to which he 
gave the name, half in jest, half to conceal 
its importance, of "The Powwow.'* To it he 
invited his partners, and those persons who 
were heads of departments in the business, or 
charged with special functions. He made out 
a formal order of business and appointed a 
secretary, who kept the records, which were 
read at each session. At the meetings the 
various enterprises of the house were dis- 
cussed, especially the new books which were 
recommended for publication, and action was 



120 HENKY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

taken which was held to constitute the policy 
of the house. Such councils are no doubt 
common enough in large firms and corpora- 
tions; but I think it is an unusual course for a 
house to invite subordinates, who have no di- 
rect pecuniary interest in the concern, into an 
equal share in dehberations and votes which 
definitely affect the conduct of the business. 
Naturally this recognition of the interest of 
subordinates in the welfare of the house led 
to a caution on their part in asserting them- 
selves. There was a mutual concession with- 
out any loss of independence ; and, though 
friction might now and then arise, the weekly 
conference, year after year, of the same men, 
engaged in the same general work, effected 
just what Mr. Houghton designed, — a soli- 
darity of mind. He saw that each member 
of " The Powwow " was likely to look at 
every project not only from his personal point 
of view, but with the consideration suggested 
by the function he performed in. the business, 
so that there would be diversity of judgment, 
and every plan would be subjected to a variety 
of tests. He saw also that the discussion 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 121 

would inform all the members of what was 
going on, and lead to greater union of action, 
a matter of great importance when the ten- 
dency of each was to become engrossed in his 
own part of the business. In the early years 
of " The Powwow " he not infrequently ex- 
pressed to me his doubt whether on the whole 
it was worth while ; he was more than once 
piqued by our criticism of measures, or ren- 
dered impatient by the expenditure of time 
over plans when he knew what was wanted 
and only wished to get it done. But, as time 
wore on, these expressions of doubt grew less 
frequent, and he threw more weight into the 
decisions of " The Powwow." As in other 
cases, he struck out in a course, upon which he 
had deUberated, with decision but with modera- 
tion, feehng his way, and perhaps only partly 
aware of how much the step meant. But it 
is clear enough now that he builded well, and 
that the power of organization which he showed 
at the beginning of his career, when he was 
captain and a large part of the crew, always 
looked toward the creation of an institution 
so perfected in its parts, and so self-perpetu- 



122 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

ating, that his final withdrawal in the full- 
ness of time should not appear to disturb a 
normal action. Mr. Houghton died on Sun- 
day. The Tuesday following was a holiday 
in the city ; on the Tuesday after that " The 
Powwow" met as usual, and proceeded at once 
with the business of the week. 



vm 

It was a cardinal principle with Mr. 
Houghton to put all his eggs in one basket, 
and carry the basket himself. He had a 
clause in his early partnership papers, pro- 
hibiting himself and his partners from enga- 
ging in any other business enterprise, and for 
his part he asked no other pleasure or interest 
than that which grew out of the varied and 
constantly changing forms of his occupation. 
He loved travel, indeed, and most of all to 
take his carriage and horses and drive with 
his family for days into the country, visiting 
the regions dear to him from early associa- 
tions, and it was a privation to him when he 
was finally forced to give up his horseback- 
riding. He made occasional trips to Europe, 
and he crossed the country twice to Califor- 
nia. Often he would come home from one of 
his pleasure trips with great glee at having 
picked up on the way a printing job. 



124 HENKY OSCAU HOUGHTON 

Yet, with his large ways of looking at his 
business, it was quite impossible that he should 
not concern himself with pubHc affairs when 
they bore very direct relation to the printing 
and publishing interest. He took a very 
vigorous hand in the discussions which went 
on whenever a tariff bill was before Congress, 
and in 1870 especially, in conjunction with 
Dr. Henry Charles Lea, was conspicuous in 
the struggle which went on over the proposed 
admission of books free. He maintained with 
great earnestness that such a policy would be 
fatal to the pubhshing interest. His influ- 
ence in this direction was great. His frequent 
visits to Washington, and his warm friendship 
with Senator MorriQ, brought him into the 
very heart of the fight. But perhaps his most 
notable service in public matters was in con- 
nection with the movement for international 
copyright. 

This movement was pushed energetically 
by the authors of the country, but the most 
effective work was done when the publishers 
and manufacturers of books cooperated with 
the authors. Congress shared in the customr 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 125 

ary slighting regard bestowed by practical 
people on the literary class, and was more 
disposed to pay attention to the men who 
represented large industrial interests. Of the 
authors, Dr. Edward Eggleston was the most 
influential advocate of the measure; and of 
the members of Congress, the most steadfast 
was Senator Chace of Rhode Island, who, how- 
ever, was obliged by illness to retire from 
active participation before the final action. 
Mr. Houghton was early interested in the 
movement and was unremitting in his earnest 
attention to the interests of the bill. He vis- 
ited Washington repeatedly, conferring with 
senators and representatives, and taking coun- 
sel with his associates in the enterprise. No 
one who has not been engaged personally in 
an effort to press through Congress a meas- 
ure which appeals chiefly to a sense of honor, 
and yet involves all manner of private and 
industrial interests, can appreciate the need 
at such a time, not only of resolution and per- 
sistency, but of patience, of tact, of individual 
handling of men, of removal of prejudice and 
even of counteracting the indiscreet zeal of 



126 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

associates. Moreover, there was not always 
entire agreement among the advocates of the 
bill as to the poHcy to be pursued when 
amendments were offered, and the whole pe- 
riod, from the presentation of the bill to its 
final passage, was one of great anxiety and 
alternate disappointment and hope. It was a 
hand-to-hand conflict, most of the work being 
done in and about Congress in personal in- 
terviews. 

Mr. W. W. Appleton, who was himself ac- 
tively engaged in the contest, wrote to 
Houghton, Mifflin & Company for his firm 
after Mr. Houghton's death : '^ The writer has 
the most pleasant recollections of many inter- 
views during the long and at times seemingly 
hopeless contest for international copyright, 
and found Mr. Houghton ready and eager 
to aid the good work in any way. His judg- 
ment, experience, and personal effort did much 
to bring about the success attained." " Mr. 
Houghton," says Dr. Edward Eggleston, " was 
one of the very foremost of all that engaged 
in that struggle, whether we consider his ac- 
tivity, or his prudence, or his influence. I 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 127 

differed from him strongly at the outset in 
regard to certain questions about the struc- 
ture of the bill, but he was always frank, and 
an opponent knew where to find him." And 
Senator Chace, writing to Mr. Houghton in 

the spring of 1891, says : " gave me 

quite a full account of what transpired in 
New York and Washington just before the 
final vote, and, after hearing his account, I 
should feel very remiss did I not say to thee 
that it is clear to my mind that the country is 
most largely indebted to thee for thy prompt 
and vigorous action. 

..." I am writing to thee in great free- 
dom and in confidence, for thee is one of 
those whom I have found all the way through 
to be, not only clear-headed, but faithful to 
all interests. Now that the victory is achieved, 
I feel like giving thee full credit for thy 
great service to the cause." 

Mr. Houghton was, in truth, the main de- 
pendence of the advocates of the bill, as re- 
gards New England especially. His cordial 
relation with the printing craft was of great 
service. At first he was opposed to what is 



128 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

known as the manufacturing clause, or at 
least was not strongly in favor of it. He 
soon saw, however, that the clause would 
give to the bill the strong support of the 
printers, and, with his own sincere belief in 
the principle of protection, he came to recog- 
nize the desirability of the clause. Later, 
when he had the opportunity to observe the 
reception of the act in England, he wrote 
home ; " I am inclined to think, in the light 
of subsequent events, that it was a wise thing 
to do; and I have not hesitated to say to 
those interested here that, if they undertake 
to get that part of the law repealed, it wiU 
jeopardize the bill." He was present at the 
Authors' Dinner in London, held after the 
passage of the act, and, after commenting on 
the speeches there made, he adds : " I think 
we have made a great step in advance, and 
American authors are to reap largely the ben- 
efit of it ; and this is as it ought to be. The 
era of cheap books should come in now, and 
American readers as much as authors should 
reap the benefit." 

He had a very just appreciation of Senator 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 129 

Chace's labors in behalf of the act, and was 
indignant at the apparent lack of recognition 
of his services after the passage of the bill. 
" When I consider," he wrote, " how much 
he has done ; that, having nothing, not even 
the remotest connection with the pubHshing 
business or authorship, he gave so much time 
and so much intelhgent effort without any 
possible motive of personal advantage to him- 
self or political advancement, the fact that he 
is so thoroughly ignored has been, I confess, 
a source of great annoyance to me." When, 
therefore, an address to Mr. Chace, signed by 
publishers and authors, was proposed, he took 
the most active interest in forwarding the 
plan, — giving, indeed, great personal atten- 
tion to securing signatures on the eve of his 
journey to Europe. He wrote as follows to 
Dr. Eggleston, June 20, 1891 : — 

Dear Dr. Eggleston, — ^We shall transmit 
to Mr. Harper in a day or two the paper 
which you indited, with a good number of 
signatures, and signatures of a character with 
which, I think, you will be pleased. We are 



130 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

only waiting now for Mr. Whittier's, which 
we hope to get by Monday ; and we trust the 
paper will go over early in the week. I want 
to repeat what Mr. Harper has suggested, — 
that it is important that you should head the 
letter ; and I have already taken the Hberty 
to say to Senator Chace that you have written 
it, and that we are going to insist that you 
shall sign it first. Since the death of my wife 
I have taken scarcely any interest in any- 
thing, but there has been no duty so grateful 
to me as to help in securing these names. 
The cordiaHty which has been expressed and 
the interest which has been manifested have 
been extremely gratifying, and I trust it will 
be gratifying to Mr. Chace himself. I have 
felt ever since the passage of the act, and 
before, that Mr. Chace' s interest and labor 
in this cause have been practically ignored. 
This wiQ enable us to remove any such im- 
pression, I trust, from Mr. Chace's mind. 

I have said that he had not long been a 
resident of Cambridge before he was asked to 
serve on the school committee, and afterward 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 131 

took his place in the common council and 
the board of aldermen. He had in these 
offices shown such qualities, and his expand- 
ing business had made him so much of a 
figure in the city, that he was elected to the 
office of mayor for the year 1872. He en- 
tered upon his duties with resolution, and with 
a determination to give the city a prudent 
and economical administration ; but he also 
took a large view of municipal life. It was 
a source of sincere pride with him that, under 
the impetus which he gave, the beautiful 
Fresh Pond was made a fine water-park, and 
the survey which he gave of the city's needs 
in his inaugural address was both broad and 
sagacious. 

Mr. Houghton was not reelected to the 
office, although he was a candidate for a sec- 
ond term. His successful opponent was one 
of the city officers, whose discharge for insub- 
ordination he had forced. It would be idle 
to rehearse a quarrel which most people have 
forgotten ; but it is not out of place to say 
that the very conscientiousness and energy 
which Mr. Houghton displayed stood in the 



132 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

way of his popularity as a chief magistrate. 
He abhorred slackness and indifference, and 
anything approaching a shirk, and, with his 
self-contained independence and sense of au- 
thority, he pushed through such obstacles as 
met him by the exercise of an uncompromis- 
ing will. Such men do not make themselves 
favorites in government, but the bracing efPect 
of this strong leadership was not soon lost, 
and the patient care with which the mayor 
examined every least concern which came be- 
fore him was gratefully recognized by those 
who needed his strong aid. 

Mr. Houghton did not confine himself to 
official service in the city. He was on more 
than one commission, indeed, and he inter- 
ested himself repeatedly in movements which 
looked to the betterment of Cambridge. His 
business reputation brought him also into 
positions of trust, both as an officer of a bank 
and in the care of private estates. It also 
made him of service to the religious denomi- 
nation to which he belonged. President War- 
ren, of Boston University, has spoken of the 
long connection which Mr. Houghton had 



HENEY OSCAR HOUGHTON 133 

with that institution, and with the Theologi- 
cal Seminary which antedated it. " It was in 
1866," he says, "that our Theological Sem- 
inary was removed from New Hampshire to 
Boston. Mr. Houghton favored its estahhsh- 
ment in Cambridge. I well remember his 
taking me in his carriage to inspect certain 
building lots and tracts of land then for sale 
in this city, on one or another of which he 
recommended our trustees to build. Some 
of these I often pass, and never, I think, with- 
out remembering our visit in 1866. Our 
trustees, however, found all these suggested 
lots too small for their generous plans, and 
hence purchased thirty odd acres in Brook- 
line. Later their plans were further modified 
by the founding of Boston University, and 
the adoption of the Theological School as 
one of a group of metropoHtan professional 
schools clustering about a vigorous academic 
department. Mr. Houghton was not dis- 
pleased that his original suggestion had not 
been acted upon, and when, in 1872, the pro- 
jected School of Law required for its safe 
launching a ' guaranty fund ' of $5000, he 



134 HENRY OSCAK HOUGHTON 

was one of the five men who pledged and 
ultimately gave $1000 apiece for this pur- 
pose. He was one of the earliest Trustees of 
the University, and for quarter of a century 
was faithful in his attendance upon its al- 
most monthly meetings. As Chairman of the 
Standing Committee on the School of Law, 
he rendered a highly valued service. His 
personal knowledge of the leading lawyers of 
Boston and vicinity was uncommonly exten- 
sive and accurate. His judgment, moreover, 
was so sound and unbiased that I never had 
occasion to regret an appointment to that 
Faculty when he had previously recommended 
it. His intimate relation to the Dean of the 
School, Judge Bennett, as an early and life- 
long friend, was also in many ways beneficial. 
To find for a successor in the chairmanship 
of this committee a man of equal qualifica- 
tions will be a problem of no small dif&culty." 
One further form of Mr. Houghton's pub- 
lic spirit may be mentioned in the active part 
which he took in the organization and practi- 
cal working of the Indian Rights Association. 
His friendly relation with Senator Dawes 



HENKY OSCAR HOUGHTON 135 

made him especially ready to cooperate with 
him, and he looked forward in the latter part 
of his life with genuine pleasure to the yearly 
conferences at Lake Mohonk. But the most 
moving cause of his interest was the ardor of 
Mrs. Houghton. 



IX 

Mrs. Houghton answered well tlie fine old 
name of helpmeet ; for not only did she enter 
heartily into her husband's life in all their 
common domestic interests, she fortified it by 
her own independent but not foreign enter- 
prises. As she became more released from 
close supervision of her household in the ma- 
turing of her children, she entered with the 
enthusiasm and irrepressible cheerfulness of 
her nature into philanthropic and semi-public 
concerns. She was an ardent friend of the 
movement for bettering the condition of the 
Indian, and she was a very strenuous opponent 
of the suffrage for women. Mr. Houghton, as 
I have said, entered with her into the former 
work, and he was in sympathy with her prin- 
ciples of anti-woman-suffrage; but a large 
part of the pleasure he took was in the inti- 
mate companionship with one so unselfish, so 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 137 

full of life and devotion, who filled to the full 
his own conception of a generous activity. 

When Mrs. Houghton died, on the 13th of 
April, 1891, there were those who with affec- 
tionate chiding were wont to say that, if she 
had spared herself more, she might not have 
been so summarily and swiftly carried away 
by the attack of pneumonia which seized her ; 
but Mr. Houghton, while conceding the pos- 
sibility of this, took the nobler view. " She 
went in all over," he said, " in the matters 
she was interested in. She did not spare her- 
self. Perhaps if she had taken care of herself 
she would have lived longer, but her life was 
full ; she was happy in her many occupations. 
It is better so." He was led to speak of the 
mistaken kindness which succeeded in empty- 
ing the old of occupation and responsibiHty, 
and recounted the experience of his own fa- 
ther, who had wasted away, he beHeved, from 
sheer inanity, because those about him were 
affectionately anxious to shield him from care 
and labor. 

He had himseK, before his wife's death, 
begun to be shaken a little in his firm health ; 



138 HENKY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

but, thougli lie professed a desire to get some 
relief from a confinement to business, habit 
was strong with him, and, despite the share 
of work he surrendered to his associates, he 
found it hard to relinquish his hold upon the 
lever. But his wife's death made a profound 
impression upon him. The loyalty he always 
felt for his friends was a sacred feeling as 
regarded his wife, and the nearly forty years' 
companionship had made her indeed bone of 
his bone and flesh of his flesh, so that, when 
she passed out of his life, strong as he was, 
he felt almost a bewilderment. The physical 
weariness, of which he had been little aware 
in the strength of his will, now became known 
even to him. He set out with his daughters 
on a nine months* journey abroad, and wrote 
back from England that he had not been 
aware how worn out he was until he got away 
from home. 

The party traveled leisurely, spending much 
of their time on the yacht Victoria, which 
took them not only into northern waters, so 
that they visited Norway and Sweden and 
Russia, but later brought them from the Medi- 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 139 

terranean to the West Indies on their way 
home. Part of the winter of 1892 was spent 
in Egypt. Mr. Houghton by no means relin- 
quished his concern for the business in his 
absence. He kept up a busy correspondence 
with the house, and gave a great deal of at- 
tention to projects which called for coopera- 
tion with foreign houses. 

Upon his return to America in April, 1892, 
Mr. Houghton resumed his customary place 
in the business, and, though he succeeded 
in absenting himself a little more than for- 
merly in the summer time, there was no very 
appreciable diminution of activity until the 
winter of 1894-95. He spent his summer, 
as for several years before, at Little Boar's 
Head, New Hampshire, and made occasional 
excursions to Vermont, especially when he 
was constrained by the good-natured com- 
pulsion of his friend, Mr. Norman Williams, of 
Chicago, himself an ardent Vermonter and a 
summer neighbor of Mr. Houghton. A Ver- 
mont Association had been organized in Bos- 
ton in 1886, and Mr. Houghton was president 



140 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

until 1894, when he insisted on retiring. The 
chief function of the president was to preside 
at the annual dinner of the Association, and 
Mr. Houghton carried his thoroughness into 
his social as into his business duties, and 
strongly attached to him those who had the 
execution of the plans of the Association. 
One of these. Captain S. E. Howard, secretary 
of the Association, wrote to Mr. Houghton 
to congratulate him on reaching his seven- 
tieth birthday, and received this reply : — 

Boston, May 18, 1893. 
Dear Captain Howard, — I have some- 
times thought that if I were a mihtary man 
and your superior officer, with power of life 
and death in my hands, I should order you 
to be shot. I feel a good deal Hke the boy 
I used to know in Vermont, who said he 
could bear anything except being "twitted 
of facts;" and to find one's self being congrat- 
ulated upon being threescore and ten leads a 
man to be a Httle rebellious. However, I will 
forgive you for reminding me of it, and also 
will commute the old grudge which I had 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 141 

against you for allowing me to be contin- 
ued as President of the Vermont Association. 
There is one advantage of being an " old 
fellow," and that is that one's friends can 
say how much they think of him while he is 
alive and kicking. One of the pleasantest 
things connected with my membership in the 
Vermont Association has been the pleasant 
friends I have made, and among them all 
there are none that I esteem more highly 
than you and our mutual friend, Colonel Car- 
penter, my co-workers. Wishing that you 
may live to be fourscore and ten or more, 
I am 

Yours very truly, 

H. 0. Houghton. 

A complimentary dinner was given Mr. 
Houghton by the Association after he retired 
from the presidency, but at his request there 
were no reporters present, and what was said 
on that occasion was not preserved. 

This recurrence to early memories was ac- 
companied by a lively interest in family his- 
tory, and in one or two letters written to a 



142 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

friend at this time, Mr. Houghton gives a 
glimpse of the manner in which he was using 
some of his enforced leisure. He was partic- 
ularly interested in the alliance which he was 
shown to have with early printers. 

Cambridge, December 28, 1893. 
... I am much pleased that you are inter- 
ested in my genealogical researches. Many 
years ago, before my marriage, I fell in with a 
man who had been to England to make special 
researches about the Houghton family; and 
from him I obtained the family tree, the coat- 
of-arms, seal, etc., and, in looking over some 
old papers recently, I discovered a copy of a 
letter from John Burke, the author of Burke's 
Peerage, addressed to Sir Henry Bold Hough- 
ton, an Enghsh baronet, informing him that 
his family were descended from the Planta- 
genet kings. The motto, I am sorry to say, 
was a fighting one, " Malgre le Tort," and 
I changed it many years ago, retaining the 
crest. At this Christmas, Miss Leach, of Phil- 
adelphia, — who with her father has been 
helping me to formulate my ancestors, so that 



HENKY OSCAR HOUGHTON 143 

I could join the Sons of the Revolution, as 
well as the Society of the Old Colony Wars, 
— has sent to me our family coat-of-arms, 
which she has carefully and I believe accu- 
rately marked out and painted and had 
framed. For the Old Colony Wars I have 
six or eight ancestors from whom I can 
claim the right. And for the Sons of the 
Revolution my son has one claim more than 
I, as his great-grandfather on his mother's 
side was chaplain in the Revolution. 

January 11, 1894. 

. . . Some years ago I was asked to speak 
about printing at a dinner of the Harvard 
Club in New York, and then and since I took 
a great deal of pains to investigate the subject. 
The principal authority is Thomas's History of 
Printing, but the information was meagre and 
confused ; but I got no hint from any source 
of my relationship to the president \i. e. Pres- 
ident Dunster of Harvard]. This was discov- 
ered by my friend, Mr. Leach, of Philadelphia, 
who has made genealogy a study for many 
years. The result of my investigations was, 



144 HENEY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

that President Dunster was the first printer, 
and not Stephen Daye. A clergyman by the 
name of Glover, for the purpose of converting 
the Indians, set sail from England in 1678 
with his family, Stephen Daye (supposed to 
have been a blacksmith), and the printing ma^ 
terials. Mr. Glover died on the passage. The 
press was set up in President Dunster's house. 
He subsequently married the widow of Mr. 
Glover, and years afterwards his children sued 
Mr. Dunster for an accounting, and Major 
Willard was called in to settle the matter be- 
tween the children and the president. Ste- 
phen Daye was discharged about the time of 
Mrs. Glover's marriage, and a Samuel Green, 
a native of the town, took the place of Daye, 
and kept it for fifty years, while Daye turned 
land speculator. Meantime President Dun- 
ster had a law passed by the colonial legisla- 
ture that all printing required in the colonies 
should be done in Cambridge. He also had 
a censorship of the press appointed, and he 
was one of the censors. Besides, when a com- 
peting press was sent over, Dunster bought 
it. So I infer that he was the real printer, 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 145 

and rather an enterprising man besides. Now 
Major Willard, having lost his English wife, 
married Elizabeth Dunster, a sister of Presi- 
dent Dunster, and she dying he married Mary 
Dunster, supposed to have been a younger sis- 
ter or niece. Mary Willard, a descendant of 
this marriage, married Ensign Jacob Hough- 
ton, my great-grandfather. From this union 
of Willards and Dunsters came two presidents 
of Harvard College, and some other fairly 
respectable descendants. . . . 

Although Mr. Houghton kept his place at 
the head of the house and rarely missed a day 
at Park Street, it was clear that he was con- 
sciously relaxing the tension of his hold on 
business details. There was the same quick- 
ness of perception when projects were dis- 
cussed, the same faculty for going straight 
to the centre, but there was less disposition to 
watch closely the separate movements of the 
great organism he had so long been build- 
ing up. With this relaxation there seemed 
almost a release of that part of his nature 
which in the strenuous activity of his life had 



146 HENRY OSCAE HOUGHTON 

been held in restraint. With the sunshine 
of prosperity came a mellowness in which the 
warmth of his disposition showed itself in 
generous converse with his friends. As he 
sat in his of&ce, he welcomed those who came 
on business as friendly visitors. It had been 
one of his marked characteristics that he 
never hurried a caller, and would sit leisurely 
chatting with him when his clerks outside 
were fuming over the interruption of what 
they thought important business ; now he let 
his sociability have free play, and especially 
dehghted when some old associate, under no 
greater pressure, as Dr. Holmes for example, 
who was a frequent visitor, could draw his 
chair beside him for a familiar chat. Always 
peculiarly open to the frank friendship of the 
young, as he grew older he turned instinct- 
ively to them for companionship. His daugh- 
ters' friends found in his mingled courtesy 
and playfulness a charm which won their con- 
fidence and respect. A touch of his manner 
may be seen in a letter which he wrote to 
a neighbor shortly before his return from his 
last journey to Europe : — 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 147 

TO E. W. C. 

Cairo, Egypt, May 11, 1892. 
My dear Edith, — Your kind note and 
the calendar enclosed were duly received at 
Christmas, and very gratefully so. The little 
sweet face on the Christmas card looked as 
if it was all ready to be kissed, as you were 
in days long agone. I do not know how to 
sufficiently compensate you for your charm- 
ing remembrance unless I send you a camel. 
Would you like a young one or an old one ? 
They both look very picturesque. I saw Al- 
berta mount one for the first time on Satur- 
day. He groaned and made a great fuss, but 
after a big effort he raised himself on his fore- 
legs, and she swayed back and forth in true 
Oriental style. After she had succeeded, 
EHzabeth and Justine mounted their respec- 
tive camels, and I a donkey ! Their camels 
got up easier, but I had hard work to mount 
the donkey ; the stirrups were too short and 
the saddle too high. You will see us all 
doubtless, in time, reproduced in photograph 
on our various mounts. 



148 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

Please thank Miss B for her kind re- 
membrance also. I do not quite know what 
to bring her in return. I had thought of the 
Sphinx, but that would not do, as she is a 
woman and would not be appreciated; besides, 
she has got a battered nose, which indicates 
she may have been on a drunken spree in her 
early life. How would a young buffalo do ? 
They are frisky and seem sociable, and have 
a way of depressing their horns on their necks 
so that they look very docile. . . . 

We have taken passage to-morrow on Ba- 
rneses the Great for the first cataract on the 
Nile. After that we expect to set our faces 
homeward. We trust a good Providence 
wiU give us favoring winds and speed us on 
our way, so that we may soon be able to 
greet all our dear friends. Please give my 

kindest regards to Miss B and C , 

if he is not so inveterate a mugwump as not 
to care for them, and with love for yourself 
from your stiU 

Young friend, 

H. 0. Houghton. 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 149 

To the large circle of his nieces and neph- 
ews and their children, Mr. Houghton was 
increasingly bound by the interchange of 
friendly intercourse and by the frequent acts 
of kindness which he was able to show, and 
it i§ not strange that he was peculiarly drawn 
to his one living grandchild. He welcomed 
her advent with a quiet, happy pleasure which 
was good to see, and it was one of his great 
resources, as his life contracted in other ways, 
to visit her and watch her life expanding. 
When he was absent from her, he wanted 
news of her, and something of his eagerness 
to share life with her may be seen in this 
letter, written when she was an infant only, 
and he was back in the neighborhood of his 
own childhood : — 

MoNTPELiER, Vt., December 24, 1894. 

My dear Granddaughter Rosamond, — 
I received your sweet letter to-day, the first 
I ever received from a granddaughter, and I 
suppose the first you ever wrote. I must say 
that the penmanship, as well as the expres- 
sion of your ideas, did you great credit. If 



150 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

you keep on improving until you are thirty 
you are likely to be the most famous female 
member of the Houghton family. Perhaps 
you may be allowed to vote on account of 
your great learning. To prevent you from 
being a " blue stocking," I think I was none 
too early in suggesting that we would have 
" high jinks " together as soon as you get big 
enough. I think this is important, as I do 
not want you to be too literary, nor do I think 
your grandmother, i£ she were living, would 
like to have you vote, but would much pre- 
fer you should be a sweet, healthy, rollicking 
little girl than a prudish, pale pedant, so 
please kick and jump just as hard as you can, 
so you can be in good training for us to have 
a lot of frolics together. Perhaps you will 
come up to Vermont with me some time, where 
there is in winter usually plenty of ice and 
snow. There is but little snow here to-day, 
but Aunt Alberta and Cousin James have just 
gone out to ride in a wagon, although the 
thermometer this morning was about down to 
zero. I was sorry not to see you before we 
came away, because you were asleep, but when 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 151 

you get older we will try and regulate these 
matters to suit ourselves. With love to your 
mamma and papa, and with ever so much to 
your dear self, I am 

Your affectionate 

Grandpa. 
P. S. Your photograph in your papa's 
arms is right before me, in which you appear 
to excellent advantage. 

In the autumn of 1894 Mr. Houghton was 
affected by a difficulty of breathing, which 
greatly impeded the freedom of his move- 
ments, and kept him from time to time housed 
at home ; so that, when the winter came, it 
was thought wise for him to go South, in 
hopes that a less stringent climate would give 
him relief. His eldest daughter went with 
him, and his family physician, also, as far as 
Asheville. He was restless and moved farther 
South, trying one place after another, only to 
return in the spring with the kind of new 
hope and courage which come to one who 
has done with travels for health, and is once 
more in his own home. A letter written when 



152 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

he was making his way northward gives a 
hint of his winter : — 

TO CAPTAIN S. E. HOWARD. 

Lakewood, New Jersey, April 2, 1895. 
My dear Captain Howard, — There is 
something very good about you ; whether it 
is innate, or comes from your association with 
Vermonters, I cannot say. It seems to be there 
just the same, as evidenced by your thinking 
of a poor fellow suffering from the grippe and 
wandering about seeking for sleep and rest. 
We first went to Asheville, North Carolina, 
where for a few days everything seemed to 
go well, when there came a succession of 
rainy and cold days, when breathing was dif- 
ficult, and sleep seemed impossible except by 
stealth. The local doctor told me I must 
get out, and, as it seemed against his inter- 
est to have me do so, I did it. He sent me 
to Columbia, South Carolina, where I did im- 
prove in the sleeping and the weather was 
milder, but the "fodder " was dreadful, — the 
old Virginia style. I stood it as long as I could, 
and then we struck out for this place. Here 




/^^^^-^^^ (^^ 



^. 



^^ / <ry ^ 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 153 

we have comfortable quarters, high prices, 
palatable food, and a tendency to sleep added. 
I purpose to try this awhile, unless something 
drives me away from here. At any rate, I 
trust to be home about the middle of April. 

Not long after Mr. Houghton returned to 
Cambridge, in the spring of 1895, there was 
a festival held by the Riverside Press, on 
the occasion of Mr. Mifi&in's fiftieth birth- 
day. The celebration was happily conceived 
and carried out by a committee chosen by 
the large body of some six hundred men and 
women who now made up the establishment. 
Mr. Mifflin himself knew only so much of the 
affair beforehand as it was necessary to con- 
fide to him. Mr. Houghton was apprised of 
the event and took a deep interest in it, but 
necessarily could have nothing to do with 
the management. When the day came, his 
family, ever watchful of him in his declining 
strength, debated whether he would be able 
to attend the festival, which was to be held in 
the evening. He Hstened without much com- 
ment, but in the course of the discussion he 



154 HENEY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

quietly slipped out and went down to the 
Press, where he held a consultation with some 
of the committee; he had resolved that the 
affair should be more significant than appeared 
on its face. 

It was agreed in his home that he might 
safely venture to the hall for a part of the 
exercises, and his carriage could wait to bring 
him away if at any time his strength or his 
interest flagged. Several times during the 
earlier part of the evening, when speeches and 
song and other entertainment were going on, 
one of his daughters whispered to him a sug- 
gestion that he might easily escape, but he 
smiled and thought he would stay through. 
In fact, he had his own plans, which he had 
no intention of subjecting to debate. A sup- 
per was to follow, in the lower hall, and Mr. 
Houghton quietly took his place at the head 
of the procession. His daughters, surprised 
at his endurance of an excitement to which 
he had not seemed equal for several months, 
were now overtaken with dismay and appre- 
hension when he was called upon for a speech. 
They did not know then that he had specially 



HENEY OSCAR HOUGHTON 155 

asked the committee to call upon him; they 
feared only that his weakness would distress 
him and the audience if he attempted, with 
his wavering voice and struggling breath, to 
make even the simplest remarks. 

Mr. Houghton rose to his feet with all the 
strength of his prime, and in a voice which 
was never firmer or clearer, with a manner 
direct and coherent, he told at length the 
story of Mr. Mifflin's association with him 
from the beginning, — giving him the hearty 
praise of one who had long tried him and 
had come, strong man as he was, even to lean 
on him. Many of the younger workers at the 
Press had never before seen Mr. Houghton ; 
none of them ever saw him in his capacity 
of leader again. It was an open, frank, and 
loyal transfer of his mantle to the younger 
shoulders, — a plea that his successor might 
have the respect and support and fidelity of 
the men which had heretofore been given to 
himself. It was a fitting climax to a great 
career. 

When the summer of 1895 came, Mr. 



156 HENKY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

Houghton was advised not to expose himself 
to the climate of the seacoast, and he availed 
himself of the courtesy of Mr. Mifflin, who 
placed at his partner's disposal his country- 
seat at North Andover. There, in a quiet 
rural district, Mr. Houghton could have not 
only the seclusion of his own home, but the 
pleasure of exploring the beautiful country 
about the place. He took daily drives when 
he was at home, but, with the unconquerable 
energy of his nature, he persisted in frequent 
journeys to the office in Boston. There was 
something very pathetic, something also very 
noble, in the resolution with which he clung 
to his work. He had never known when 
he was beaten ; he did not know it now, but 
kept up the attack week after week. His 
daughters shielded him in every possible way; 
his friends visited him ; and the humor which 
had so often turned the warm side of life 
toward him did not fail him now. 

There was, now and then, an acute form 
taken by his disease which alarmed not only 
those about him, but Mr. Houghton himself ; 
and, though he was not much given to pre- 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 157 

sages, it was clear that he saw his end draw- 
ing near. Without referring to this directly, 
he made it somewhat evident by the seri- 
ousness with which he collected himself in 
occasional talks over important concerns. I 
remember one such, which made a strong 
impression upon me. It was the last day of 
July, when he arranged to have me see him 
by himself. There was a matter in which we 
were both greatly concerned that had come 
to the point of decision. He began, in his 
characteristic manner, at a long distance from 
the matter in hand. His words came with 
difficulty, his attitude showed discomfort. He 
rehearsed many situations and relations with 
which we were both familiar, and came nearer 
and nearer to the heart of the subject. His 
manner deepened in earnestness, his voice be- 
came stronger, and he spoke with emphasis, 
— with eloquence, indeed. In this matter he 
could make no personal inquisition, as he had 
been wont to do; he must leave it to the 
decision of his partners. Yet the principles 
which underlay the whole were insisted upon, 
and he felt deeply the interest involved. He 



158 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

was not thinking of his personal estate : he was 
thinking of the institution he had founded ; 
that republic must suffer no hurt. 

His strength failed him steadily, but he 
made an almost superhuman effort on Fri- 
day, the 23d of August, to be present at the 
celebration of his grandchild's first birthday 
anniversary in Winchester. It was as if he 
gathered his strength for this final demon- 
stration of his love and his indomitable will. 
He returned the same day to North Andover, 
and on Sunday, the 25th, he died. 

After his death there were public expres- 
sions of appreciation of his worth and his 
services. Resolutions of respect were passed 
by the book trade, the bank in which he was 
director, the University which he had so long 
served, humane societies to which he had be- 
longed, and the city of Cambridge. A me- 
morial service was held at the Harvard Street 
Methodist Episcopal Church, at which the 
Riverside Press was represented by one of its 
oldest members. Yet, when even a strong 
man has died, one turns presently from these 



HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 159 

public expressions, sincere as they are, for 
there begin to come to light the secret ways 
of the man's goodness. It was in the nature 
of Mr. Houghton's care for others that it was 
confidential. But a man's testament cannot 
be kept private, and it was quickly known that 
Mr. Houghton had established a generous 
fund to be administered by his daughters 
for the worthy poor of Cambridge. This act 
was not the tardy charity of him who can no 
longer use his wealth. He had been doing 
this kind of good for years, sometimes in 
direct relations, sometimes through almoners. 
He aided students struggling for an educa- 
tion ; he gave liberally to his poorer kin ; and 
there were certain discreet persons who re- 
ceived from him regularly sums of money for 
distribution. He was especially glad to do 
this through his church. " I cannot better 
put you in possession of what I have learned 
of his genuinely benevolent heart," said his 
pastor. Rev. George Skene, at the memorial 
service, "than by reading you a letter which I 
received from him a short time before he left 
us. He had from time to time placed in my 



160 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 

hands sums of money to be used in charity 
as I found occasion. Appreciating the fact 
that he was a business man, and systematic in 
his methods of doing business, I was careful 
to keep an accurate account of all disburse- 
ments, and report to him in detail the dispo- 
sition of his gifts. After my last report I 
received this letter from him : — 

" My dear Pastob, — I have your ac- 
count of your stewardship, and find it very 
satisfactory. I enclose herewith another 
check, if it will not trouble you too much, 
to use in the same way. When this is used 
up, will you kindly let me know and call for 
more ? Thanking you for your kind interest 
in distributing my little benefaction, 
" I am sincerely yours, 

«H. 0. Houghton." 

The last connection which Mr. Houghton 
had with the of&ce where he had so long 
transacted the business of his life was to make 
inquiry into the well-being of one of his ben- 
eficiaries. 



019 985 408 2 



